Aurora Borealis
by Jocelyn
Summary: The forming of Gipsy Danger's pilots and crew, from Academy to her first kills and the golden age of the Jaeger Program. Ch. 39: The final chapter of Aurora Borealis. Raleigh and Yancy face one last, painful obstacle as they find themselves the most successful Rangers to date. But the enemy isn't a kaiju, only their own drained minds after pushing the drift to its limit. Complete!
1. Contents Under Pressure

_**Author's Notes:** This story is part of my Generation K series of _Pacific Rim_ fanfic, but none of the other stories in the series are required reading, since this is a prequel to both the stories and the movie. This tale is my take on the golden age of the Jaeger Program, starting in 2016 with Raleigh and Yancy Becket and Tendo Choi's time at the Jaeger Academy, where they cross paths and train with many other canon Rangers. It draws from the movie canon, some of the novelization, the graphic novel Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero, and also the tidbits given to us by Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham online and in interviews. Hope you like!_

_**Canon on the Jaeger Academy**: According to Travis Beacham, the Academy is a 6-month intensive training divided into three 8-week terms. The first is boot-camp style officer training, the second focuses on drift compatibility testing and pons training, and the third on Jaeger pilot team training._

**Chapter One: Contents Under Pressure**

_Jaeger Academy, Kodiak, Alaska, Class 2016-B, Term 1. _

_June 2016..._

"'No pressure,' you said!" Raleigh snapped a towel at his brother as they exited the shower, but his arms were so shaky that his aim was off. "'We won't make the first cut,' you said!"

"Blehh, shut up, brat!" Yancy mumbled into his hands. "Christ, and I thought football tryouts were bad."

One week into the first trimester at the Jaeger Academy, and there wasn't a single recruit walking the halls whose legs weren't wobbling. Raleigh and Yancy might not have been star athletes, but they had been athletes and in good physical shape - so they thought. But wrestling and hockey training hadn't required being able to run three miles carrying double your body weight or mastery of a completely new martial art. Even the genuine star athletes among the class - and there were several - were staggering.

"We will grind you to dust," the C.O., Pentecost, had warned. "And only when we fail to do so will we find the stuff of legend."

That guy had not been joking.

There had been over three thousand applicants to the Jaeger Academy for this class, 2016-B. About four hundred had passed the initial screening tests. Raleigh and Yance had been reasonably confident that they could meet those physical requirements, but less so about the written tests. The written screening exams turned out to be easier than expected. Most of the knowledge material had been no worse than the S.A.T., and heavy on the kind of basic logic and spatial puzzles that they did for fun on long trips. The only really difficult thing about the screening was how incredibly _long _it had been, grueling and repetitive and frustrating. Everyone had emerged drained and proud when they were admitted, but the opening address had cut that thinking off in a hurry.

Marshall Pentecost had informed them, "You are not to be congratulated for being here. By passing the application screening, you have shown only that you meet the most minimal requirements to demonstrate that attempting this will not be a waste of everyone's time."

"Ouch,"Yancy had muttered.

It wasn't just a physical meat-grinder either. The days began at seven a.m. for workouts, then spending most of the morning being drilled at "Jaeger Bushido," the new hybrid martial art that had been developed. The afternoons were devoted to classes: military officer school, tactics, K-science, and Jaeger engineering. They finished classes at five p.m., then had another round of Bushido drills and workouts before dinner at seven.

Raleigh and Yancy were both a little doubtful of whether they could learn the martial arts. High school Greco-Roman was nothing like this Asian-heavy stuff, though Yance had experimented with MMA one summer. He certainly was memorizing the fifty-two positions faster than Raleigh, but that was par for the course at every new thing they tried.

Raleigh wasn't really sure why they didn't just give up. Quite a few people did that first week. But Yancy didn't suggest it, and Raleigh couldn't bring himself to. He decided that they would just... see how far they could take it. That was really what it was all about. Just to see what they could do.

The course work was not as bad as Raleigh expected. He had feared the kaiju science and Jaeger mechanics would be completely out of his league, but found it wasn't so hard to understand. More surprising still, it was actually interesting.

"Predicting their movements is of the most important aspects of kaiju science - after finding ways to kill them, of course," their Kaiju Oceanography lecturer said, smirking as the students laughed. The scientists were a lot more laid back than the military guys. "No doubt you've noticed how relatively short the time frame is between the warning and the kaiju making landfall. It can take forty-eight to seventy-two hours after movement in the Breach before we're able to deliver a warning."

She brought up a map of the Pacific and projected it to cover the entire wall. "I don't have a hologram projector nearly big enough to give you a feel for just how vast the Pacific Ocean is. The Breach really couldn't be located in a worse spot. We have instruments installed that can identify movement there, but once the kaiju is several miles away, we can lose it very quickly."

A tall black man raised his hand. "Are there theories of why they all attack big cities?" he asked in a Caribbean accent.

"Several. One of the prevailing ideas at the moment has to do with the currents." The projection shifted in color to show the movement of some of the currents. Raleigh could recognize the jet stream, but that was about it. "Environmentalists have been tracking urban runoff for major cities for about twenty years. When we started combining that data with the current positions at the time of each attack, we noticed something interesting."

**_K-Day. 8/10/13_**. Colored streams ran from major cities all around the Pacific, rippling and swirling through it, but one, bright green, originated in Southern California - and ran straight across the bright red blip that indicated the Breach.

"Crap," someone murmured behind him.

**_Manila. 2/5/14_****.** The currents were different six months later, and one of them had brought a bright yellow stream from the Phillipines close to the Breach.

**_Cabo San Lucas. 6/1/2014_**. The streams were closer to what they'd been on K-Day. _Summer pattern, _Raleigh supposed. But they were a little further south, and the line led directly to Baja California.

"We've noticed that during hurricane season, the delay between movement in the breach and offshore detection is much longer - the water is much rougher then, and the current patterns are disturbed."

**_Sydney. 9/2/2014_**. A time-lapse ran, the Breach flashing red to indicate MOVEMENT, then hours passed by in which a blip was briefly picked up in various locations... as if the kaiju had meandered for awhile before honing in on the current stream in the Southern Hemisphere that led straight back into Sydney's runoff.

The room was very quiet as everyone digested that. "Yes, you can see that this a rather disturbing possibility. Our invaders could be honing in on our major population centers like hounds to a scent."

Raleigh's throat had gone dry. He shot a quick look to his right, and saw Yancy sitting as stiff and serious as he was. Sure, no pressure... not for Raleigh and Yancy Becket in particular, no. But for the people running this operation? It had to be something else.

* * *

><p><em>April 2015…<em>

K-Day had been a brain-straining eye-opener, changing everything they all thought they knew about the world.

Each subsequent attack had turned life a little grimmer, turned the world a little darker and uglier and scarier.

"We've got nothing to worry about,"Yancy had reassured Raleigh and Jazmine. "We're way the hell beyond where these things are going." By Sydney, many experts had observed that the kaiju were going into major cities. "Yeah, Anchorage is a couple million, but it's nowhere near the size of the places kaiju go, and we're up here in the frozen north."

Even when the civil defense offices and NOAA had circulated Preparedness Plans, and new sirens had been added to the tsunami warning drills already installed around town, Yancy had still brushed it off. They would be fine. Anchorage was the middle of nowhere as far as Pacific cities went. They'd be fine.

They had dutifully taken part in the emergency drill ordered by the newly-formed PPDC in November 2014, put together their emergency kits and escape plans just like they did for tsunamis. It was pretty much the same plan - keep medical supplies and food supplies stored and ready, fresh water, some cans of gas, and run inland. Follow the signs. The Kaiju Alert System tested every Tuesday evening, and the Tsunami Alert System tested every Wednesday.

They had believed Yancy when the next kaiju headed towards Chile. The military had managed to kill it while it was still offshore, though it had bowled over a couple dozen islands in Micronesia and the South Pacific on the way. It seemed like the kaiju preferred the tropics and sub-tropics. Alaska was a long way off from their hunting grounds.

Then had come April 2015. Raleigh and Jazmine were fighting, as usual. He'd posted a YouTube video of her working out (retaliating for her nominating him for Homecoming Queen, insisting he was too pretty to be king), then she'd dumped a soda on his laptop. He was trying to get into her room, breaking his usual restraint on physically going after her or her stuff (unlike Jazz - she never thought twice about hitting him), and she was yelling and crying as he was trying to shove the door open...

The sirens went off. For a minute, he stood in the hallway in confusion. Was it a test day? And those weren't the tsunami sirens, the pattern and the pitch was different, more like an old World War II air raid...

Jazmine opened her door and stared at him. They'd forgotten all about their feud. "What... what..."

A sense of unreality crept over him, like in 2013 when they'd first seen the pictures out of San Francisco. They'd laughed at first. Everyone had laughed and scoffed. It was a joke. Some kind of hoax, like the zombie thing in Texas a few years back. Then it had been on _every_ news channel. A mass hack, someone had suggested? Finally, as the day that would be named K-day had wound on and on, this strange, unpleasant detachment had come down over Raleigh. It had felt like his head was trying to stay in one place while the world was spinning off its axis.

In the hallway with Jazz in 2015, he felt that way again. _But... but... kaiju don't come here. This is Alaska. Middle of nowhere. Yancy said. So many people said we have nothing to worry about. _

Mom and Dad had a NOAA radio in their bedroom, to warn them of storm alerts and the like. It came on automatically when there was a severe weather alert, and also when the tsunami and kaiju alerts were tested. It was annoying as hell, but it had stopped Yancy from trying to leave for a game in a major blizzard, and warned Dad of a road closure a few times.

Now it was going off too. _"This is an emergency warning from the Pan Pacific Defense Corps Kaiju Alert System. This is _not_ a drill. A kaiju has been detected approaching the Western Seaboard of the United States and Canada. Areas under alert include: northern California. Oregon. Washington. British Columbia, Canada. Alaska. If you are currently in any of these areas, please take immediate action and prepare to evacuate the coastline. The kaiju was last detected thirty minutes ago by an observatory platform four hundred miles south of the Aleutian Islands. It is moving north-northeast at an estimated fifty miles per hour."_

"Raleigh?" Jazmine's voice trembled.

"TV," he croaked. His head was swimming. There were things they were supposed to do, plans they were supposed to follow, but they were whizzing around in his head so fast that he couldn't begin to focus on anything.

Every channel on the TV had been running the alert, with that little red blip on the map of the enormous ocean. The newscasters were drawing arrows to show the direction it was moving. Northeast. Straight towards Alaska or Canada, maybe the US Cascade states.

One of the reporters was drawing circles around cities on the map. "So far, we have seen kaiju heading straight into major cities, so if you live in the Pacific Northwest, _please_, plan for the worst and evacuate now! Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Anchorage, Juneau, Kodiak - just - just, if you're on the coast, especially the islands, get to shelter! Alaska, you are a peninsula, get across the border into Canada or as far inland as you can! I can't stress this enough - this is the sixth kaiju attack and so far every one has taken thousands of lives! Every time these monsters have turned up, it has taken nuclear weapons to stop them! Pacific Northwest, evacuate now!"

There were sirens outside. The fire station down by the little civic center was rolling everything, only adding to the cacophony from the alert sirens. Jazmine started to cry and clapped her hands over her ears, and Raleigh wrapped his arms around her.

Dad was somewhere in Utah on a project, not due back until the weekend. _At least he's safe, _Raleigh thought dully. Mom was down the street at Diane Saunders's house. Yancy was at the park, a going-to-college barbecue for one of his buddies.

_What do we do... I don't know what to do..._

Then he heard Yancy's voice. His brother was yelling. Raleigh stumbled to the door and as he and Jazmine came onto the porch, they saw Yancy tearing down the street as if, well, as if a kaiju was chasing him. He must have sprinted the whole mile from the park, and he looked like his feet hadn't touched the ground. He was already yelling their names, and Raleigh almost dropped. Yancy was back. It would be okay. He'd tell them what to do.

He did. He was pointing at them when still halfway down the block. "GET THE KIT, NOW!"

It snapped Raleigh out of the shock, and he went to the storage room for their emergency box. Jazmine too obeyed their brother's shouted instructions and went running across the street for Mom.

"Do we call Dad?" Raleigh croaked as Yancy began checking over the box's contents and dug back into the crawl space for their camping supplies.

"I already tried; cell network's already down," Yancy told him. "He's safer than we are. Go get Mom's medications, all of 'em, and put 'em in here." He dumped his old backpack's contents out on the sofa and went into the living room desk, pulling out the lock box with their important papers. "GO, Rals! We have to get on the road_ fast_ before traffic gets up!"

It would be okay, Raleigh chanted to himself. Yance would take care of them. He always did when Dad was gone. Hell, he did that when Dad was here.

When he came back down, Mom and Jazmine had Diane with them. Raleigh's racing mind processed that Diane didn't have a car at the moment; Yancy had called a tow truck for it yesterday. "Of course, you'll come with us," he was saying. "Raleigh, put this stuff in the trunk," he ordered, thrusting the backpack and supply boxes at him. "Jazz, help him, and get the gas cans from the shed - make sure the lids are sealed. Let's get your stuff," he told Diane, and ushered her out the door.

When Yancy declared them ready, locked all the doors, and they piled into the car and pulled into the road, Raleigh looked at the clock and realized it had been barely thirty minutes since the sirens had gone off. It felt like hours had passed, and surely the kaiju would come ashore any minute.

Yancy had Raleigh sit up front next to him with the tablet that had been a graduation/"thanks for not going to college and staying to take care of Mom" (as he'd once bitterly remarked) gift from their dad. The signal kept dropping out even from the phone lines, and the web page was slow as hell, but there wasn't much new information beyond what they already had. The map showed the kaiju's location where it had been picked up in the North Pacific, and hurricane-like projected paths of where it might be going based on its speed and direction.

_"There's still far too much we don't know about these things,"_ the radio announcer was saying. _"They can change direction, change speed - frankly, if you're in the Pacific coast of the planet, you should think about heading inland now. If you're in the Pacific Northwest of the US and Canada, you should be on the road now. This thing could make landfall in the Aleutian islands in six hours._"

Jazmine was slumped across Mom's lap, sobbing softly. "Jazz," said Yancy quietly, calmed down from his frenzy once they were on the highway. At least it wasn't at a standstill yet. "It's gonna be okay. Any luck texting Dad?"

Their mother scowled at her phone. "I think the message went out, but I have no idea whether he got it. We had a signal for a little while, now it's gone again."

"I talked the plan over with him months ago. He should know what we're doing."

There weren't that many roads for the entire coastal population of Alaska to take inland, and it was frustratingly, terrifyingly slow going. Military trucks and ambulances when rolling straight down the median; drivers got impatient and went speeding down the shoulder. Cars broke down and had to be pushed off the road so everyone else could keep moving. Military choppers and fighter jets roared overhead, and the radio blared endlessly with the same alerts.

At one point, they wound up next to a minivan with a bunch of military stickers, and Yancy rolled down the window to shout to the middle-aged man at the wheel. "I don't suppose you've got any updates?"

"No news, son, sorry! I've got my grandson on the ham radio in back, but the last anybody saw of this thing, it was still a thousand miles offshore."

"How the hell do they lose a kaiju?!" Raleigh demanded.

"The ocean's a lot bigger than you think, kiddo," said the driver, giving him a rueful grin. "Remember how long it took to find that plane a few years back? We may not know anything until this bitch - " he caught himself, glancing at the back seat of his van where Raleigh could see some smaller silhouettes. " - this _thing _is almost to shore."

"Thanks anyway," said Yance.

"No problem. Godspeed!"

"You too!" Yance sighed and rolled the window up. "Well, it was worth a shot. _Mom!_" he glared into the rear-view, and Raleigh saw Mom with a cigarette in her mouth, pulling out her lighter.

"For heaven's sake, Yancy, at a time like this - " Yancy just glowered at her, and she scowled, but relented and put it away. Diane gave her a stick of gum. An hour later, they were at a complete standstill, and Mom got out of the car to join a few other people smoking on the side of the road. Raleigh saw Yancy's black expression whenever he checked on her. They'd all long since given up trying to persuade her to quit, even after her diagnosis, but Yancy still glared at her sometimes.

They'd been on the road for eight hours when the next alert came in: the kaiju was off the US-Canadian border, now heading east on what looked like a straight charge for the city of Vancouver. All five of them gasped in relief, with Yancy and Raleigh dropping their foreheads onto wheel and dashboard. When Raleigh looked at their neighboring vehicles, a lot of people were doing the exact same thing.

On the other hand, everyone still in Vancouver had hours to get to safety. People in Seattle or Portland had maybe a little longer if the kaiju decided to jog south. "God help them," murmured Diane.

"Can we go home now?" asked Jazmine. Some drivers were already pulling over, trying to figure out how to turn around when all lanes were eastbound.

Yancy beckoned to Raleigh to show him the tablet. "Let me see the map. Let's just go with the flow for awhile. We're not too far from Barnhart Airport - at the rate we're going, we'll get there about the same time the kaiju gets to shore. We can stop, stretch our legs, maybe find a place to stay overnight until we know what's happening."

Raleigh set the tablet back on his own lap, and was embarrassed by how much it shook in his hands. Yancy smiled at him. "You did good, kid."

_Not really, I just stood in the living room like an idiot until you got home. _

At dawn the next morning, they were packed along with hundreds of other people in an airport sports bar, staring at TVs and tablets in shock and awe. There really was no other way to describe the reaction as the military deployed a gargantuan _robot_ thing that went into battle with the monster. Buildings still fell, people still died - but the mechanical monster was beating the alien monster back.

_"We finally have a name for this extraordinary creation: the PPDC is calling it a Jaeger. German for hunter, it's been under rushed construction since the conference last year in Seoul_!"

_"There are two pilots inside of it. It's armored with massive iron plates, and they are using it like a - like a virtual reality game - the machine takes commands straight from the pilots' brains!_"

_"It has all kinds of weaponry - it's firing mortar shells straight into the kaiju's face!"_

_"Did you see that?! It punched it!"_

_"This has to be the most incredible thing I've witnessed in all my years of broadcasting, and that includes five of these monster attacks! Human ingenuity and courage has answered this new threat in the most spectacular way imaginable! They are beating it back towards the Georgia Strait!_"

_"The kaiju has fallen! They've thrown it to the ground! There are... some kind of rockets mounted on the Jaeger's shoulders - OH! Oh my god! I can't see in the smoke, they look like they're on top of it!"_

Raleigh had been three on September 11, 2001. Yancy had been six, and Mom and Dad had made him take his brother and sister into the then-playroom and stay there, away from the TV. Raleigh didn't remember it, but Yancy told him when they were older that Dad had sat down next to him and quietly said, "Always remember where you were, son. The world changed today."

He'd remembered that story on K-Day, and again with each subsequent attack. But on this day, in April 2015, when the broadcaster shouted, _"It's dead! It's DEAD! They've killed it!"_ and burst into tears, and the little airport terminal exploded into screams of joy and wild embraces and sobbing all around, he made a mental note to always remember where he was.

_A tiny little airport in Gakona, Alaska on Interstate A-1, running for our lives with everyone else from Anchorage. We thought if the kaiju didn't get us, the nukes would._

There hadn't been a nuke this time. There had been a... Jaeger.

He leaned over to Yancy as the noise died down. "Dunno about you..."

"... That is the by far the most _awesome_ thing I've ever seen," Yancy finished. Then he laughed and hauled Raleigh over to Jazmine and Mom for a group hug. Considering he'd been awake for a full twenty-four hours, spending most of that time driving, he was in a crazy good mood, but his eyes were starting to look burned into his head. Everyone except him had managed to doze in the car a little.

Raleigh got to take the wheel for the long, slow drive home, and Jazmine switched to shotgun while Yance fell asleep in the back with his head in Mom's lap. Raleigh and Jazz sang along with the radio and did victory dances with other drivers, all without waking Yance up.

_Maybe, _he thought, _the world isn't ending after all. I wonder if this is what V-E Day felt like. _

* * *

><p><em>July 2016…<em>

"_Psst! Rals!_" Yancy elbowed him and jolted him out of his musings. Raleigh blinked and blushed, but to his relief, the instructor hadn't noticed him daydreaming. Hell, a few people in his line of sight had fallen asleep, and she didn't seem to care. He glanced at Yancy's tablet to see what notes he'd missed. As always, Yance made to cover it up, but then grinned and let him look.

_You better. I'll bet every model plane in my collection that you'll be zonked out in class at some point. _The only debate then would be whether to draw something on him before waking him up.

"What were you thinking 'bout?" Yancy asked when they changed for the evening's workout-drill-torture session.

"When we got the warning for Karloff and had to evacuate. Seeing Brawler Yukon take him down. It's so vivid, that fight. We've had, what, three or four since, but that's the one I remember the most."

Yancy stretched and hissed, rubbing a big bruise on his shin. They were all pretty well marked-up six weeks in. "Y'know... I don't. I remember the drive, where we were when we found out it wasn't coming this far north, and being in the airport watching. Everybody cheering. But the fight itself is just a blur."

"Well, you were _tired _by then, man. You hadn't slept since the night before." Raleigh yawned heavily as they walked to the Kwoon and remarked, "Kinda like I feel right now."

"Tell me about it. When I realized we get almost no weekend time, I almost said let's throw in the towel."

The only down time they were given on weekends was being able to sleep one hour later, with drills starting after and special long lectures, and workouts focusing more on recovery and limbering up. Almost half the population of the Academy had quit over the first weekend, and with each subsequent weekend, that seemed to be when a lot of recruits cracked.

"_I_ didn't," Raleigh replied, smirking.

"Who's all motivated and shit?" Yancy swatted him, and they laughed. "Are they _inspiring_ you, kiddo?"

Getting to watch the launch of Yankee Star on the Fourth of July… okay, that had been pretty damn inspiring. The first of the Mark II Jaegers had come out earlier in 2016 to great fanfare, but the second American Jaeger had been ceremonially rolled out of the Assembly Building right there on Kodiak Island before the eyes of the Academy and the world. Her pilots were instant celebrities, junior Marine marksmen until they'd been assigned to the brand-new Jaeger Program, and when everyone and anyone had been tested for drift compatibility, they had succeeded. Yankee Star was equipped with incredible fire power for her sniper Rangers, and she was now on her way to California to stand guard over the half-finished LA Shatterdome and middle Pacific Coast.

Raleigh observed, "The truth is... it's not as bad as I thought. I mean, it's brutal, no question, but... not in a bad way. And, hey, come on! I've never been team captain - got benched, got cut a few times, but have I ever dropped out of anything?!" he demanded.

Yancy tilted his head as he considered that, then smiled. "No, you never have," he agreed, his voice getting a little softer, to that tone that always made Raleigh feel proud. "So, it's a plan: we go home if we get cut, but we don't bail."

"Deal." They sealed it with a fist bump and headed into their break-out class.

Morning drills were held in the main combat room, the entire population of the Academy. Raleigh preferred those, since it was easier to blend in, and usually there were a few people who bungled the positions worse than he did. In the evening workout and for some of the lectures, they were broken down into smaller groups of twenty to thirty.

Their break-out group's fightmaster was a Japanese man named Anjin Tessori, whose appearance and manner fit just about every stereotype about Asian martial arts masters. Raleigh had to bite his tongue hard not to add "Grasshopper" whenever Tessori was giving someone directions. But the man knew his stuff, and Raleigh had more sense than to get on his bad side. One of the guys had bragged about his various black belts and asked a lot of pompous questions, only to get kicked around the mat six ways from Sunday without landing a single hit of his own. He hadn't even made it to the first Friday before dropping out.

He took them through the fifty-two position drills again, and to Raleigh's pleased surprise, he didn't find himself making any major mistakes. Yancy actually bobbled one, and Raleigh tried not to cringe as Tessori honed in on him.

"Show me your _irimi_ again, Becket-san."

Yancy bowed and obeyed, and Raleigh saw the problem; that bruised shin was bothering him. Tessori knelt and examined it. "Visit the infirmary this evening and have that treated. You will prove nothing by injuring yourself."

"Yes, sir."

The fightmaster put them to work on the stretching and limbering drills, and lectured as he went. "The purpose of this training is not to destroy your spirit - whatever you may think at this stage," he added dryly. "Nor is it to destroy your body. In the west, you have a saying: what does not kill you will make you stronger. Rangers must be as strong as any human being can possibly be, so we must take you to your limits. You _will _fall. That is our intention. The ones who stand up again are the ones who may be Rangers." He smiled faintly as they all worked and chewed on that. "I know that you have questions by now. Ask."

Over the top of his legs, Raleigh eyed the others, then the big guy from the Caribbean raised his hand. "Is that why the ones who get eliminated can try again?"

"Exactly. Those that we decline who have the perseverance to improve themselves, we welcome them." Tessori smirked. "But you will have noticed, we do not extend that privilege to those who withdraw voluntarily." When he turned his back, Yancy winked at Raleigh.

_"Have I ever dropped out of anything?_" Raleigh knew he was recalling their earlier conversation. In all fairness, Yancy never had either. He hadn't even made the J.V. football team, (and had only tried out at Dad's urging) and Dad hadn't even bothered to nag Raleigh to try, but they'd both made wrestling. Their standing in those competitions and on the hockey team had been middling at best, but they'd enjoyed it, and neither of them had ever given up.

One of the more gung-ho, competitive guys raised his hand. "What percentile will make the first cut?"

Raleigh managed not to roll his eyes. Brandon Whatshisname had been asking _everybody _that, and the instructors either didn't know or just didn't feel like telling him.

Tessori folded his arms. "There is no 'percentile' here, Pines-san. If your intention is merely to out-perform a certain number, you will fail, because you miss the point." He smirked as his students exchanged confused looks. "There is no set number who shall pass, or who shall fail. Just over two hundred remain in this class. If at the end of this term, all of you have met every challenge that we set, then two hundred shall advance. Of course, that won't happen. But if none meet the standards we set, then none shall pass."

They finished the flexibility drill. Tessori eyed them and gestured for them to start again. It was tiring in its own right, but felt incredibly good on Raleigh's stiff, sore muscles.

Another guy asked, "Why are some of the standards subjective, then?"

"You know some traits can't be quantified - like attitude, creativity, and respect. Willingness to learn, ability to change and adapt. Your instructors will be watching for all these things."

"Is that why there are so many women admitted?" asked another guy. Their break-out group was all guys, but Raleigh wasn't the only one who shot him a disgusted look. Don something-or-other had been grumbling from Day One that the only way so many female recruits could have passed the screening tests was that the Academy had male and female sets of standards.

Raleigh and Yancy supposed he was probably right. On the other hand, brute strength couldn't be the only qualifier - and speaking of attitude, it was "subjectively" obvious that Don was just a sexist ass.

But their fightmaster just nodded. "And some of you are smaller than others. That is taken into account, as are the differences in age." That startled Raleigh; he hadn't considered that being younger made have been deemed an edge - or maybe a handicap. "For example, we are now on the sixth week of the first term. When this term began, four hundred nineteen recruits were enrolled. Of that number, ninety-one were female. In the past five weeks, two hundred six have voluntary withdrawn. _One_ was female."

It was all Raleigh could do not to laugh at the look on Don's face.

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming Soon: _**_We all remember college final exams fondly, don't we? Imagine what the Jaeger Academy has in store! We shift to Yancy's POV as he recalls the casual whim that led them to the Academy and the less-casual history of the Becket family behind it, and all the recruits face a brutal final spar that will show them - and their instructors - what they're made of in **Chapter Two: The Bet That Changed The World!**  
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**_PLEASE remember to review!_**

**Original Character Guide**

Anjin Tessori - one of the senior martial arts instructors/fightmasters at the Jaeger Academy. Japanese national, age mid-60s (looks mid-40s).

Diane Saunders - a neighbor of the Beckets and friend of their mother, age 50.

**Original Jaeger Guide**

Yankee Star - Mark II, American Jaeger, built at the Kodiak Island Assembly Building, launched July 4, 2016. Pilots are Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell, junior marksmen with the US Marines, ages 27 and 28. (_Invented by me because I have no doubt the US would have insisted one at least one of every class of Jaegers_.)


	2. The Bet That Changed The World

_**A/N:**__ Many thanks for all the great reviews and feedback! Please keep them coming! Feel free to post questions or comments at my Tumblr: 3fluffies._

_**A little note on our heroes:**__ When it comes to their sister Jazmine, Raleigh and Yancy aren't always reliable narrators. There are very few "bad guys" in this story, but there are also no saints, and Jazmine's problems are seen through the skewed perspective of two teenaged boys who are way out of their league in understanding mental health._

_**Another note on our heroes:**__ While Guillermo del Toro has emphasized that Raleigh is not in any sense The Chosen One or super special in any way, he did do something remarkable even by Jaeger pilot standards, piloting solo. So I do think it's reasonable to foreshadow that perseverance and drive a little._

_**Also:**__ this story is GEN. There is flirtation and the occasional casual fling, but apart from canon relationships, romance will be at most background scenery._

**Chapter Two: The Bet That Changed The World**

_Jaeger Academy, Kodiak, Alaska, Class 2016-B, Term 1. _

_July 2016…_

"What happens if you're too hurt to finish?" Raleigh wondered as their break-out class took a turn in the weight room. "Didn't a guy have to withdraw because he broke his ankle?"

"That wasn't a withdrawal - they dismissed him. Honorable discharge or whatever you call it. He can try again when he heals." Yancy rubbed his taped shin. "The medics think this is okay, but want me to ice it every day." He grinned sheepishly. "Doctor Tán made a point of saying that nobody gets a black mark for asking for ice or ibuprofen, but if we're hurt and haven't had it looked at, we might."

"Duly noted," said one of the other guys, sitting down to bench press. "Hey, somebody spot me?"

"I gotcha," said Raleigh, letting Yancy have a turn on the bars. "I get their point, though. We're not fighting people, we're fighting alien sea monsters. If they've got more qualified pilots, that's a good thing."

"Are there ever going to be more Jaegers than pilots?" asked Don the Douchebag, rolling his eyes. Raleigh wasn't sure if he was military or just had major pretensions, but god, he was pompous.

"2016-A had only three pairs declared Ranger Ready," said the guy Raleigh was spotting, sitting up to stretch his shoulder. "We're 2016-B. They're supposed to be rolling out three more Mark IIs this year, and replacing a Mark I team. That's a lot of pilots. I'm Cady Spencer, by the way." He held out a hand.

Raleigh shook it. "Raleigh Becket. My big brother Yancy," he gestured to the bars, where Yance was doing pull-ups.

"You guys get interested when they asked for siblings?" asked Don.

"Yeah," Raleigh half-lied, not wanting to hear Don's opinion of their level of commitment. Yancy was listening, but didn't elaborate.

Even so, conversation between sets passed comfortably enough, and there were a few more introductions to their fellows. Raleigh was starting to think maybe Don wasn't so bad - maybe just a little nervous - when a group of women walked into the gym.

Raleigh wouldn't blame any of his gender for looking; of course, he looked. Most of the girls seemed sturdy and fit, and he recognized some of them from the big drill sessions. But one of them was so small that he'd have thought she was too young for high school. Five-foot-one at most, and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. She avoided all their eyes and dropped onto an empty mat to stretch out.

Raleigh and most of the guys quickly returned their attention to their own tasks, but Don mouthed at them, _Really?!_

"Mind your business, dude," Yancy muttered.

_You too, Rals, _he told himself, and swapped out with Cady. But he did steal a few furtive glances, and found he was rather gratified to see the mousy little girl down next to a stocky black woman, doing full-length push-ups like a pro. Petite or not, she had some muscle.

When she slipped past their group to an empty bench, Raleigh couldn't resist leaning towards Don and muttering, "Really." Because although she had less weight than the guys, she had a lot more than most women he'd seen bench-pressing.

"Do you need a spotter?" Yancy offered gallantly.

She hesitated, well aware of the stares, and Raleigh mentally kicked himself and went to another station. But after a second, he heard her say, "Thanks, yes."

_Eyes on the job, man_, he told himself. There were cameras in just about every room of the Academy. Pentecost and the instructors had made it clear that the recruits were being scrutinized for their behavior on and off the clock - and their attitudes. He'd better make sure he kept a good one.

* * *

><p>Towards the end of the term, the remaining class - now whittled down to about a hundred eighty - got a tour of the simulators and pons testing facilities.<p>

"A lot of the publicity has focused on how hard it's going to be to make the first cut," said the instructor. "And that's not wrong, but keep this in mind: an even smaller percentage will make the second. Unlike the first term, failure to make the second cut isn't due to lack of effort or some quality that you can change. The most difficult part about being a Ranger is drifting with a co-pilot."

Raleigh and Yancy had dutifully read the material on the pons neural bridge and its purpose. He still wasn't sure that he really understood any of it, and Yancy had reassured him that it was just as confusing to him.

He'd gradually gotten more confident about asking questions. In school, he hadn't been reticent (on the contrary - he'd gotten in trouble for having a smart mouth plenty of times), but as everybody kept reminding the entire class of recruits, this wasn't school. So he'd been uncharacteristically quiet and just listened to everybody else most of the time, and when he did decide to dare drawing attention to himself, he rehearsed his question over and over in his head.

"Neural load. It's not just a question of size and weight, is it?"

The instructor nodded. "We human beings have a tremendously complicated nervous system. The human mind is still a better computer than anything we've ever invented. And the Jaeger is the most powerful, complex machine ever built. But to take control of that system and everything in it means that you're not only operating your own complicated body anymore. You're operating another one, much larger, with systems that no biological being has. That's a lot of information to process."

The big guy from the Caribbean pondered the rest of the class. "How much alike do the two pilots have to be?"

"Physically, not at all. The rig and drivesuit system in the conn-pod are all designed exactly to the individual pilot's measurements. For the most obvious example, here's Cherno Alpha." He tapped his computer, and one of the photos of the big Russian Jaeger's launch appeared. He zoomed in on the pilots. "Note the size difference. Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky are a married couple, and they're _very_ drift compatible. Adapting for a drastic physical difference like this is tricky, but it can be done. Finding another partner for either one of them who can make that Jaeger fight? Next to impossible."

"So the ones who signed up in pairs have an advantage?" said Don.

"They do, although we've had several successes with people who first met in the PPDC. Last class, in fact, one of our three sets of pilots had only met after K-Day. An open mind is crucial for both sides. And we had over a dozen sets of blood relatives who didn't make the second cut last term."

"How many made the first cut?" asked Brandon Pines.

"Last class...we started with... forty-eight, if I recall. You'll be put through compatibility tests, then some initial drift sync testing. Depending on those results, there's a cull mid-term, and the majority will be out. Seven pairs made the second cut in the spring. Three completed full drift and simulation training and were deemed Ranger Ready."

"What can we do?" Raleigh asked without thinking. "I mean - to prepare for it."

The instructor smiled. "This term, learn the material. It's the foundation not only for being a Ranger, but for being a PPDC officer. If you make the first cut, you're eligible for officer status, and there are a lot of career paths available. It takes over six hundred people just to deploy a Jaeger and its pilots, not counting the engineers, neurologists, and the people on watch and studying the kaiju. There's opportunity, and there's need."

He paused thoughtfully, then brought up another image, a clip from a video. It was two guys sparring in the Kwoon. "This was one of our teams from the spring: Vic and Gunnar Tunari. Brothers." Raleigh couldn't help looking at Yancy, who grinned at him. "Each of these clips gives us an indicator of their compatibility."

The sparring wasn't surprising, but the next thing was - Dance Dance Revolution, from the looks of it. Laughter rippled through the group. Next, the Tunaris were playing table tennis. Next, checkers.

Yancy's eyes widened, and his hand went up. "Is that what all those board games are for in the mess hall?!" He and Raleigh had pulled out the chess set once only to fall asleep on it after eating.

"Got it in one, Recruit. Didn't you notice the DDR floor in the corner? No? Well, most of you are too exhausted this term to do more than eat and sleep off-hours." The instructor grinned at their astonishment. "Marshall Pentecost drew the line at Twister, but there's also a rather good boom box available. You'll see the Tunaris singing karaoke with their crews now and then. They're very musical."

"Sounds like a good gig if you can get it," someone murmured.

* * *

><p><em>August 2016…<em>

By finals, Yancy knew that Raleigh's attitude had changed, but so had his own. Rals had always been a good student, solid grades, honor roll, but his strength lay in humanities. Yancy preferred hard math and science, and that gave him an edge in the PPDC. But his little brother was focusing hard on the academic training, and doing very well on the physical side.

The physical basics were no problem for either of them. They could run the various distances well within the acceptable times, and lift the required weight for the prescribed duration. Jaeger Bushido with all its Eastern roots was harder, but they both kept up the drills and the practices, competing - as the fightmasters pointed out - with themselves rather than each other. Sparring was actually fun, especially together.

All the objective exams came first. That was exhausting enough; hours upon hours of written and verbal drilling. Just memorizing the stuff wasn't enough; they had to be able to process it.

Raleigh was fretful when they came out of Oceanography. "I may have blown it on the forecasting, Yance," he said. "I know I screwed up at least two of the formulas. Just tried to write out my reasoning for everything and hope they could at least follow where I thought the damn bogey was going."

"No pressure, kiddo. This whole thing's a long shot; we said that going in. You did damn good on the tech practical."

Raleigh shrugged, brightening a little. "Helped to think about it like the planes I used to build instead of just a bunch of wires and plates and numbers. It's all _for _something."

It always pissed Yancy off when people (*cough*_Jazmine_*cough*) referred to Raleigh as mediocre. His little brother wasn't, and neither was Yancy, but because neither of them were Number One in most of their pursuits, a lot of people (*cough*_Dad_*cough*), didn't think they were worth noticing. If Yancy hadn't gone to Raleigh's wrestling matches, he'd have had no family there at all. Jazmine occasionally came to Yancy's matches and games, but half the time, Yancy suspected that was only to serve as a reminder to Raleigh that she wouldn't be caught dead at his.

For most of high school, Mom was too sick to get out much, but Yancy had once asked Dad to go when Raleigh had made the state meet. _"Really, Yancy, he's ranked eleventh. Between work and taking care of your mother, I don't have the energy to spend hours cheering for an also-ran."_

Yancy had never asked again and prayed that Raleigh wouldn't; if Jazmine ever overheard a remark like that, she'd Twitter the entire human race. (Not that Raleigh was any saint in their bitching sessions. He'd posted a gif of one of her error-riddled D-graded essays to Facebook that same year asking for brain cell donations.) Mom and Dad had never been willing to intercede with them even before Mom got sick, so it always fell to Yancy to keep them from killing each other.

He had a few more blissful memories of the times the three of them had gotten along, before Jazmine hit her teens and turned almost psychotically hormonal. Their verbal and written confrontations were vicious and ugly - they'd both been called out for cyber-bullying each other by teachers more than once. And Jazmine didn't restrain herself on the physical side.

Neither of their parents were interested in showing up at teacher conferences past age twelve, so one teacher had quietly suggested to Yancy that she thought Jazmine needed therapy, maybe even medication. He hadn't bothered broaching that subject to Mom and Dad. They would have laughed. The more violent Jazmine got, the more Yancy feared that Raleigh was going to lose it and inflict some major injury on her.

But Raleigh never did. Yancy remained proud - and a little incredulous - that his brother, unlike his sister, had never crossed that line. He'd told Raleigh so more than once, like when Jazmine had had split Raleigh's lip and blacked his eye with a hockey stick.

_"My little brother is tougher than anyone gives him credit for,"_ he'd told his friends. He tried, damn it, he _tried, _to treat Jazz equally, to love and take care of them both, because Mom was sick and Dad didn't give a shit. But in his heart, he bitterly admitted Jazmine sure didn't make it easy.

Raleigh did. He wasn't a tag-along in Yancy's eyes; he pulled his weight in whatever they did together, often when he started at a disadvantage. Yancy appreciated that, even admired it. In their later teens, once Rals finally started having some serious growth spurts and put on some muscle, they were within a couple inches and twenty pounds of each other, and could partner in a lot of things.

Some guys - not exactly friends - had sneered when Yancy decided against college. The Beckets didn't have the money for a university with Mom's medical bills, and with Dad gone so much. There was no one other than their neighbor Diane to look after Raleigh and Jazmine and get Mom to her treatments if Yancy was busy at the community college. But he wasn't interested in explaining his reasons, and people had simply judged.

Boy, had they judged.

The Beckets were no-accounts; Yancy had heard that kind of thing from mouths of his peers and adults. They were destined for dead-end jobs and their parents' basement. One of aforementioned frenemies had snidely proposed that Yancy join the army, and when the PPDC Academy had sprung up at Kodiak Island, someone had suggested that - until the recruiting package circulated and everyone saw the screening test requirements.

"_Never mind - no chance Becket could get in there. That place is tougher than the Citadel, look at this!_"

When another recruiting call had gone out looking specifically for siblings... an idea had occurred to him. It started as a joke when Raleigh was a senior, sifting without much enthusiasm through the course tracks at the community college and vocational school. _"Hey, Rals, how about we both blow off college and join the Rangers?"_

_"Awesome! I'm totally in!"_

Then Raleigh had gotten the same lip at school that Yancy had - no way in hell could the Becket losers get into the Ranger Academy - and Jazz had repeated it gleefully one day at home.

Challenge accepted.

They'd spent the spring studying the material available and made a few bets, defiant to the taunts. They'd been fairly optimistic about the screening part, but figured it would be next to impossible to make the actual gut if the press was to be believed. No pressure, no pressure.

Here they were. And Yancy had to admit that in his heart, he was more invested than he'd been at the beginning. He knew Raleigh was too. Had he gotten them both in over their heads?

* * *

><p>The Final Spar, or "Final Final," as most of them called it, was a full-on physical sparring session against the fightmasters, timed for the very end of exams when they'd all be as run-down as possible. "Man, that's so unfair!" a few of their fellows groaned.<p>

But Yancy and Raleigh read between the lines of their instructions. Nearly all the grading criteria was subjective on this last spar, but it would account for a large chunk of their final score. They'd already been tested severely on their mastery of the Jaeger Bushido positions and strategy drills. This one wasn't about knowledge. It was about all those things Tessori had reminded them couldn't be quantified.

They all drew their time slots, and weren't permitted into the Kwoons until their own session was done. Raleigh appeared to be dead last on the list. "Shit."

"No pressure," Yancy told him.

Raleigh just looked at him, serious and tense, and countered, "Pressure."

_Well, alrighty then. _"You've got it, kid," he told him firmly, and headed off for his Final Spar.

His opponent was Tessori. Of course it was. "This is not a test of your memory," he said, confirming what Yancy already suspected. "Not even your skill. This is our final test of _you_, Recruit. You wish to be a Ranger?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. I am the kaiju, you are the Jaeger. Stop me."

They started with hanbōs, and it all went to hell from there. This man, twice Yancy's age who'd probably been practicing this stuff since before he could walk, laid into Yancy with no quarter. His whole body rang with the blows until he was disarmed, then he had to focus every reflex into dodging the staff and trying to get a hit in around it. Clearly, when it was Jaeger versus kaiju, there were no rules.

He shocked himself when he managed to disarm his opponent, then abandoned the Bushido all together and went straight into Greco-Roman. Tessori smiled - _Oh shit!_ - and advanced again to demonstrate just how much he knew about those forms.

He had Yancy pinned in short order. "Finished?"

Yancy blinked. _You giving me a choice?_ "We have time for another round?" he grunted.

"We have all the time in the world."

_Ohh, I get it. _Yancy stood and bowed. "Then no, not finished." He knew better than to look at the judges, but Tessori smiled again.

It was pretty embarrassing; Tessori mopped the floor with him. His only consolation was that in all likelihood, everybody else had gotten the same treatment. He chanted to himself what he'd worked out about this exam: they wanted to see adaptation, endurance, force of will. Jaeger versus kaiju, no holds barred. So he worked around the growing collection of major weak points that Tessori pummeled into him and tuned out everything and everyone else.

When Tessori pinned him for the seventh time, he knew he was in major trouble; he couldn't put his weight on his left foot, and his right arm was numb. When he tried to get up again, he fell. _Damn. _Tessori didn't bother to declare an eighth round but simply knocked him over and pinned him again. "Enough, I think."

"Yes, sir," he grunted, and managed to bow with all his weight on his other leg without swaying too much. He did have to sort-of hop off the mat.

To his intense relief, once he took stock of his fellow watchers, most of them were in the same sorry condition he was. "Nice work, man," murmured the big Jamaican. "Don bailed in two rounds."

Well, that made him feel better about his own performance, but Yancy was a bundle of nerves when Raleigh came in. Had they deliberately put one of the youngest guys dead last?! Yancy gritted his teeth. Watching Raleigh wrestling and playing hockey had stressed him out sometimes; _this _was going to be nerve-wracking.

Raleigh knew better than to look at him, but Yancy shamelessly willed himself to transmit everything he'd picked up in his head as Tessori went over the instructions.

In wrestling, Rals tended to be over-aggressive and leave himself vulnerable. To Yancy's intense relief, he had the sense not to try it with this fightmaster. He was cautious, measuring his opponent. _Good, kiddo, good._ When they finally closed, in the first few shots, Raleigh actually landed a couple of hits.

Then they went at each other with a blood-pounding volley, and like Yancy, Raleigh was soon overcome and disarmed. He approached the new disadvantage as Yancy had, evading the hanbō and trying to get it out of his opponent's hands, but Tessori pinned him in a few moves. _Fuck... don't give up, Rals, don't give up._

"Are we finished?"

"No." Raleigh lashed out and sent the staff flying.

"You did not wait for the next round," Tessori protested, but he was already in stance.

Regrouping, Raleigh pointed out, "Jaegers don't. Neither do kaiju."

There was that feral grin from the fightmaster. "No, they don't. No rules." He switched to Greco-Roman and gave Raleigh no more opportunity to think, only react. Yancy bit the inside of his mouth until it bled as they grappled, then Tessori pinned Raleigh painfully. "Enough?"

Raleigh lashed out with a foot and rolled away. "No."

After the fourth pin, when Raleigh nearly bit Tessori's hand to get loose, Cady hissed in Yancy's ear, "You're hyperventilating!"

Dazed, Yancy caught himself and realized there were a lot more people in the room now watching Raleigh get pounded. That little mousy girl was in the front of a clutch of other women, her eyes huge as Raleigh went back for the hanbō and he and Tessori tore at each other in a volley that left Yancy's ears ringing.

Finally, Raleigh was pinned, and Yancy knew he wouldn't be able to stand again with Tessori nailing that pressure point behind his knee. "Are we done?"

"No."

_Goddammit, Rals, enough! _He was at nine rounds, for fuck's sake, he'd gone longer than Yancy had.

But just then, scrambling backward, Raleigh suddenly looked over his shoulder. Yancy was certain he'd said nothing aloud, but his little brother's eyes flashed, and he gave a quick jerk of his head.

_No. Stay out of it. _He'd done that when Yancy had tried to intervene in fights before. Yancy didn't always accept being warned off... but this wasn't a brawl, it was the Jaeger Academy. They might claim no rules, but they couldn't very well kill a student. He chanted that at himself and bit his tongue as Raleigh was down again and couldn't get any limbs under him.

But Raleigh rolled onto his back and kept defending. Yancy was half-proud, half-mortified as Tessori pinned him face down and twisted his arm mercilessly until he yelled in pain. "Now?"

Raleigh rammed his head sideways into Tessori's knee, probably concussing himself in the process, but crawled free and grunted, "_No._"

What the fuck was Raleigh trying to prove?! Moreover, why the fuck weren't the judges calling the match when he couldn't go on?

His restraint fell apart when he saw Tessori's arm around his brother's throat. "Done?"

Raleigh gasped out, "No - "

Arms grabbed Yancy as Tessori shifted to press down on Raleigh's jugular. Raleigh's eyes were rolling back, he was going limp, and people were hissing at Yancy, _"Don't!_" - and someone announced, "That's enough."

Tessori let go, Raleigh slid to the floor, and people gasped, including Yancy. He'd never noticed Pentecost coming in.

Seething, he hoped to see the fightmaster get chewed out for letting his ego run away with him, but Pentecost didn't. His back to the watchers, he looked on as Tessori carefully helped Raleigh to his feet, supporting most of his weight, murmuring instructions as he always did when somebody got injured - disregarding that he'd been the one to inflict the injuries, Yancy thought furiously. Most of the guys who'd grabbed Yancy weren't letting go, which was probably a good thing.

"What's your name, Recruit?" Pentecost asked as he scanned his tablet.

"Becket, sir," Raleigh panted. He was glassy-eyed, but not as bad off as Yancy first feared.

Pentecost didn't seem to notice or care as he looked at his tablet, then he paused and looked up. "Which Becket?"

"Raleigh Becket."

Pentecost turned to the watchers, and his gaze fell on Yancy at once. Granted, it wouldn't be hard to work out who the other Becket was: the one with half a dozen guys holding him back, looking ready to murder the fightmaster.

Pentecost regarded Yancy with a neutral expression, then turned back to Raleigh. "There was no way you could have defended yourself further. You could honorably yield at any time. What was the point of that?"

"He said - kaiju versus Jaeger. Jaegers don't yield," Raleigh said.

_For god's sake, kiddo, this wasn't a movie, _Yancy shook his head. "Do you know the difference between perseverance and ego, Mr. Becket?"

Raleigh had to think about that for a minute, and finally said, "No, sir. I guess I didn't think it mattered."

"Dismissed, Recruit. Go straight to the infirmary."

Raleigh tried to bow and would've ended up on the floor again if Tessori hadn't caught him. Tessori smiled at Yancy, ignoring the scowl he got in return, and helped Raleigh down from the mat to his brother. "Can you manage?"

"Yes, sir," Yancy said coldly, slinging Raleigh's arm over his shoulder and taking his weight. Tessori just smiled again and returned to Pentecost and the judges.

"Recruits, your first term is complete," Pentecost announced. "Decisions will begin to be issued this evening, and all of you will know by 1800 hours whether you've been chosen to advance to the second term as candidates. Those of you who fail to do so have earned the right to try again." Pentecost paused for a moment. "The Ranger Academy favors persistence."

Trying to keep Raleigh's feet under him, Yancy completely missed that, but his fellow recruits didn't. "Son, I don't know whether you're a genius or a complete moron!" exclaimed Cady.

"_I_ do," Yancy muttered. "You idiot. You might've taken yourself out of contention by getting hurt!"

Raleigh blinked at him and gave a vacant smile. _Oh, shit. _"Just wanted to... see how far I could..."

He dropped, and Yancy caught him, cursing under his breath. One of the women came running over. "I'm an EMT. Come on, Spunky, wake up." She patted Raleigh awake, then checked his pulse and peered into his eyes. "How you feel?"

"Like I'm... either gonna pass out or puke."

"Well, you already passed out, so don't puke on me," Yancy sighed. The little girl came over and wordlessly offered a bottle of water. "Thanks. Rals, come on, stay with me!"

By splashing his face and getting him to drink, they brought his brother around, and Raleigh managed to get his feet back under him and walk, if leaning heavily on Yancy. It wasn't far from the Kwoons to the infirmary - probably by design - but Yancy still ended up more or less carrying his brother through the door. Raleigh'd gotten a good deal heavier than Yancy remembered.

"Wow," said Dr. Tán when they came in. "This isn't as bad as I thought."

"What?!" Yancy demanded as he got Raleigh onto a bed.

"Last term they put three guys in here at finals. _Don't worry_, Recruit," he said, cutting off an explosion. "There's no major damage. That was the point. The fightmasters know when to draw the line."

"Do they?" Yancy snapped before he could catch himself.

"We do." He did not want to have to deal with Tessori again so soon, but stood there and fumed while the guy walked in and watched the doctor finish looking Raleigh over.

Raleigh gingerly sat up and faced him. "I'm okay, sir."

"He is," said the doctor, speaking more to Yancy than anyone else. "Keep ice on those bruises, especially the ones on your neck, and stretch out well. The term doesn't officially end until tomorrow morning. You can go back to quarters to sleep, but come back here if you have ringing in your ears or loss of vision, or if your balance is still off in the morning."

"Yes, sir." Raleigh grinned.

Dr. Tán looked from him to Yancy, then laughed. "Hate to tell you, Anjin, but your name is officially mud with the elder Mr. Becket."

"Oh, I noticed." Tessori was unconcerned. "We did warn you that we would grind you to dust to see what was left, and push as far as we can safely go. This was the final step."

"It's _fine_," Raleigh murmured, shooting Yancy a warning look. Yancy grudgingly supposed he was looking better already.

"I'm glad to hear it, or it might complicate things _next_ term." Yancy blinked. Tessori was holding out an envelope to him, and another to Raleigh. "Congratulations, gentlemen. You have both passed the first cut. Report back in one week as pilot candidates. Enjoy your rest; you've earned it."

With a small bow, he walked out, and left both Beckets gaping after him. They fumbled their letters open to confirm what he'd said. There it was: congratulations, they were approved to continue to second term, instructions for their week-long break and where and when to report back.

It even gave their test scores. No real indicator of where they'd fallen in rank, but at least it showed how they'd compared to themselves and each other. On most of the objective material, be it Jaeger Bushido drills or K-Science written exam, Yancy scored just a little higher.

The exception was the Final Spar. Raleigh had the higher score.

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming Soon: _**_We switch to the POV of another recruit who passed Class 2016-B's first cut - Tendo Choi. Several fateful meetings take place as the focus of the Academy turns from academic qualifications to drift compatibility... and the Academy goes on alert for movement in the Breach in __**Chapter Three: We Answered The Call!**_

**PLEASE remember to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Anjin Tessori - one of the senior martial arts instructors/fightmasters at the Jaeger Academy. Japanese national, age mid-60s (looks mid-40s).

Dr. Steven Tán - the Jaeger Academy's chief medic, early 30s, Chinese-American

Cady Spencer - one of Raleigh and Yancy's more laid-back classmates, mid-20s

Brandon Pines - one of Raleigh and Yancy's more gung-ho classmates, early 30s

Don the Douchebag - That Guy. We've all known one, thinks himself (or herself, to be fair) More Worthy than everyone else, whether based on sex, race, class, education level, whatever. This was the last chapter he'll appear, since he did NOT make the cut (and he probably won't try again, just huff off and blame everybody else.)


	3. We Answered The Call

_**A/N: **__ Many thanks to everyone for your reviews and comments! This chapter introduces several original characters, but also some familiar ones from the broader Pacific Rimverse. Where possible, I've used canon details for the canon characters, but had to fill some things in. There's an original character guide at the end of the we switch to Tendo Choi's POV for several momentous meetings!_

_**Canon Note:**__ Something that bugged me a bit about the movie was that given the size of the Pacific and the location of the Breach (in the Marianas Trench off Guam), unless the kaiju can swim as fast as a jet plane, it should take close to a day for them to reach any mainland. The action sequences in this stories reflect how long and grueling that wait must have been on the PPDC._

**Chapter Three: We Answered The Call**

_Jaeger Academy, Class 2016-B, Term 2_

_August 2016…_

In between each of the eight-week trimesters came a week's respite leave. Candidates still in the running to be pilots usually took the whole week, to recover from the grueling pace and get ready for the next term. There were jobs to be had from the PPDC for more than just would-be Jaeger jockeys. Anyone who passed the initial screen tests could probably land an office job. Those who made it through the first trimester could join J-Tech crews and support staff.

Few turned it down.

Tendo Choi was among the many pilot hopefuls who made the first cut in Section 2016-B, but took seriously the warning that most of them would not be able to drift successfully.

"It's not a reflection of your character," Dr. Lightcap cautioned. "Drift compatibility is still something we're working to understand, and we're not entirely sure whether it's innate or learned or what combination of the two."

The class that had made the first cut of 2016-B totaled sixty. All the first-term break-out classes were combined, and the survivors were instructed to choose their first drift test partners on their own, which came as a surprise.

"Trust is an integral part of this, but you can develop that," Dr. Lightcap told them. "I am requiring mandatory sync tests for family members, since the statistics show higher rates of compatibility. But those of you who came with a partner can choose to test with others as well. For those of you who are strangers, now's the time to get to know each other. Dating and physical intimacy is discouraged," she smirked at the stifled groans, "though it is not a violation of the regulations. Sparring in the Kwoon, board games, strategy and trivia, even dance are ways to get to know a person and judge your interaction. This first week will be dull for many of you when you're not in pons training and brain scans. You're confined to base. Use that time well."

"Keep in mind, candidates," said Marshall Pentecost. "Your performance in and out of uniform affects both your standing in your class and your drift compatibility."

And Class 2016-B was left alone. Everyone looked around. "So!" Tendo clapped his hands. "Let's get this party started!"

Nervous chuckles rippled through the room, but by mutual decision, the class circled their chairs. "Hi, my name's Cady Spencer, and I'm a Jaegerholic," said another smartass.

Laughs rang out again as the tension eased. "Where you from, Boozehound?" someone asked.

"Portland, Oregon. My family's trying to get inland, and the benefits here would cover the costs."

"So you're just about the money?" asked a guy wearing an Air Force jacket, sounding disapproving.

"Hell, no. My Mom's from Manila; we still don't know if any of her family are alive. I knew I'd be enlisting in something after that. When PPDC started recruiting, I picked this over the army."

"Good deal, man." An enormous black guy with some kind of Caribbean island accent waved to the room in general. "Antwan Ferrier, Jamaica."

"What made you come in this direction?"

"I worked in tourism. I was in Cabo San Lucas."

"'nuff said," Tendo observed dryly. "Tendo Choi, born in Beijing, raised in San Francisco." Hisses rang out, and one of the other guys got up to offer him a "bro fist." He wondered idly if there was anybody in this crowd who hadn't lost somebody, or at least lost their way of life by being too close to where one of the kaiju came ashore.

Another of the more social-minded guys suggested a group get-together in the mess hall for ice-breaking that would feel less like an AA meeting. Everyone backed him. Tendo was among those who jumped up to help out - gathering drinks, utensils, moving tables, and casting a few side-eyes at the more standoffish souls. Everyone had potential partnership on their minds as they chatted and ate and made introductions, which was a bit of a paradigm shift from the competitiveness of the first trimester. Even though there'd only been a few Academy classes before this one, the mess hall staff looked like they'd seen this meet-and-greet routine before.

That was where Tendo met Yancy Becket and his little brother Raleigh, local guys who now had the distinction of being the only ones from their hometown crowd to make it past the first cut. Raleigh was more like Tendo in demeanor, though Tendo was older than both of them. Word had got around about the younger Becket's epic Final Spar, and Tendo was sorry he hadn't seen it. Although he would've liked either of the Becket boys as potential partners, they were making their first attempt together, so that was that.

There were several already-matched pairs of relatives. There were Chloe and Christian Warner, a handsome pair of black half-siblings from the deep South who'd never been further north than Missouri and now about to experience their first Alaskan winter. They were more nervous about that than they were about Pons training. Chris had a beautiful tenor singing voice; he'd been a handyman moonlighting as a choir singer before K-Day. Chloe was an accountant.

There were two sisters, Susanti and Devi Hassan, and their male cousin Indra, who were from an Indonesian family living in Australia. They were generating a lot of interest with the testers, who had passed a set of triplets from Shanghai a year ago. That was an interesting idea. "Think about it: if they ever get to the point of having one pilot compatible with multiple people, you could rotate 'em out," said Cady.

"What's the point of that, though?" Yancy wondered. "If one pilot's down, both of them are down, right?"

"Not always," Chloe pointed out. "Physical injuries don't always happen in sync. One of the Gages got burned last month when Romeo blew a fuse, and Dr. Lightcap was the only one on crutches after - "

"'Romeo blew a fuse,' I see what you did there!" crowed Christian.

"Shut up!" She smacked him upside the head as everyone else broke up laughing. "Dammit, I don't wanna drift with you, I don't want your dumbass puns in my head!"

They really did cover all walks of life at the Academy. The youngest was barely seventeen, a pretty, petite brunette from San Jose who was so shy that Tendo wondered if she had some kind of disorder. But she always stepped forward with a timid, "Can I help?" when they were setting up for those precious social hours. Her name was Lea Franklin, and she'd been on her way to Tokyo for some international robotics competition when Trespasser wiped out her family. A few of the guys in Tendo's group exchanged dubious looks when she walked by, only to have the other group mutter that they'd seen that little girl take down guys twice her size in the Kwoon.

"She's wicked fast," Chloe Warner said enviously. "And even more wicked smart. Even if she doesn't get through Pons, I'd bet there's a spot in J-Tech R&D with her name on it."

This class boasted a large number of candidates who had signed up in pairs in response to the recruiting calls trying to narrow the field for drift compatibility. There was a pair of cousins from China, Bao Wang and Shan Thou, who had left technical school to take a shot at the Jaeger Program. Another pair of cousins, Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald, were from an Irish military medic family who'd been living in Panama when Trespasser attacked. They'd each lost a parent to Kaiju Blue. There were also unrelated pairs, like Kennedy LaRue and Stephanie Lanphier, high school grads and childhood friends from Seattle, who had lost their funding for college (along with the prospective college, which had been in the nuke zone) when their parents' employers were obliterated by Trespasser.

Out of their class of sixty, there were forty-six males, fourteen females. Seventeen Americans, six Canadians, nine Japanese, ten Chinese, four Mexicans, five Russians, the rest a scattering from around the globe. There were Christians, Muslims, Jews, a couple of Hindus, and a large number of "somewhere in between" and "none of the above." Their ages ranged from seventeen (Lea Franklin and Raleigh Becket) to thirty-eight (Antwan Ferrier). Some had never finished high school, others had multiple post-grad degrees. All had the intelligence or at least the attention span to absorb the first trimester's written material and pass the exams. All were physically fit enough to have made it through the first trimester's intense physical demands.

Everyone's specific reasons varied, but all felt the compulsion to join the fight against the kaiju. Levels of passion varied, from fiery determination (Brandon Pines, an Air Force pilot who'd been among the small percentage on active duty out of Edwards Air Force Base to survive, and Brian and Janet, who wanted to take up their family's fight) to "eh, we'll see what happens" (Yancy and Raleigh.)

Weeks one and two were mind-numbingly boring. Brain scan after brain scan, cognitive test after cognitive test. All the cut-ups in the class were coming up with more and more ways to liven things up during off-hours. Tendo won the Name That Tune contest, and placed third in the Dance Dance Revolution tournament behind Antwan and Stephanie, the eighteen-year-old former cheerleader. Raleigh Becket swept the history portion of the Trivial Pursuit tournament, and Yancy Becket was the first one to get a perfect score on the bushido drills.

* * *

><p><em>October 2016…<em>

It all got a little too lively at the Academy when the kaiju alert sirens went off. Hanbōs hit the floor in the Kwoon, as instructors simply dropped what they were doing and ran for the door. Most of the candidates had memorized the Event Instructions (they'd been drilled and tested on those as well), but a few still forgot themselves and just followed the instructors.

The rest remembered what candidates were supposed to be doing: clean up and stay out of the way. "Hey, where you going?!" Raleigh yelled after one of the more gung-ho guys. "That's out of bounds for alert!"

"Never mind," said Yancy, catching his arm. "Come on, people, let's close up."

Equipment went back into place, all the monitors went on the emergency channel, and people hurried for the locker rooms to change. "We're at yellow alert, that means we've got time to shower, thank god," said Chloe, brushing past Tendo for the women's room.

"Even so, we've got one hour to be at stations, so don't do your hair," Christian called after her.

"Har har har."

"I can never keep this shit straight, what's yellow alert?" asked Cady.

"You mean other than Star Trek?" Tendo quipped. He had absolutely no doubt that whoever had designed the PPDC kaiju alert system must have been a Serious Nerd – and he approved.

"Movement in the breach," Raleigh and Yancy chorused, then eyed each other.

"Jinx," said Tendo.

"Tendo, man, do you use any slang that isn't a decade out of date?"

"Nope." Just to emphasize it, he and Cady and Antwan pranced out of the shower singing _Saturday Night Fever_, getting eyerolls from the other guys and loud groans echoing from the girls down the hall.

They all shut up when the next alert tone sounded. "Kaiju Alert. Condition Orange. Target Codename Reckoner, cleared breach at 14:22 hours, bearing west-northwest at sixty-three kilometers per hour. Red alert initiated for the following locations: Philippines, China, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam..."

Coming into the hallway, all the monitors now displayed a map with a red, orange and yellow "cone of uncertainty" not unlike hurricane projections. The candidates reported back to barracks for their emergency gear, then gathered in the main assembly hall for instructions.

Their briefing supervisor turned out to be Ranger Tamsin Sevier of Onibaba fame. Outside of her drivesuit, Tendo was astonished to think the beautiful Scottish redhead couldn't possibly be older than he was.

He knew she'd been severely injured in Tokyo, and she and her partner had both been discharged with highest honors, but she didn't show any obvious signs now. She stood in a fighter's stance as she watched the candidates checking in on the monitors, and her gaze moved between the roll call and the kaiju blip in the Pacific moving steadily westward.

"Good evening, Candidates."

"Good evening, ma'am," they chorused.

"I'm pleased to see you all remembered your Event Drills." She tapped deftly over her console and gave them a small smile. "I see only three warnings for persons out of bounds, and one hundred percent checked in on time." A few people started to applaud - Tendo almost did, but caught himself from the look she shot them. "Please, this isn't high school." For someone so slim and pretty, she was damn intimidating. "While our Eastern compatriots are deploying in response to this alert, your previous schedule is being suspended so that we can take this opportunity to instruct you further on alert response procedures. Base alerts last from the time movement is detected in the Breach until the kaiju is destroyed, anywhere from two to four days."

Even the smartasses lost their sense of humor in a big hurry as the kaiju signature moved closer to land, and every few minutes, Sevier would pause in her lecture to take stock.

Almost everyone jumped at the double-tone alert that sounded as three Jaeger blips appeared on the screen, signaling deployment. "Lucky Seven is deploying to Manila. Horizon Brave to Shanghai, and Tacit Ronin to Okinawa. A great deal depends now on where the bogey goes around Taiwan."

"Christ, not Manila again," murmured Cady behind Tendo.

Sevier gave him a sympathetic look. "Family there?"

"Yes, ma'am. Dunno if any of them are alive as it is." Cady, the Indonesians, the Chinese, and Japanese recruits had gradually moved closer and closer together as the night wound on.

She nodded grimly. "You're going to find that one of the most difficult aspects of life in the Corps is hearing the transmissions from an event. Once we have contact with the bogey, I'm going to turn them on. Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. We are thousands of miles from the contact point, on alert, but the reality of the situation is that there is not a bloody thing you or I can do. The media makes these engagements sound very romantic, but hearing it in real time is not the same."

Ranger Tamsin Sevier knew what she was about. Reckoner, the largest kaiju recorded so far if the sonar readings were to be believed, cruised through the Luzon Strait, making brief landfall over the Balintang Islands, which luckily wouldn't inflict damage to more than wildlife. Cady let out his breath as the kaiju passed the Philippines by, but the mainland Asians' tension only grew. The candidates nibbled on emergency rations and dozed on and off on the floor as the base personnel changed shifts.

The projection cone narrowed onto China and Vietnam. "South China Sea," murmured Yancy. "Straight line into Hong Kong."

The blue kaiju bogey began crossing paths with multiple green and yellow blips. "Commercial vessels," said Sevier calmly. "Civilian vessel." Each time the bogey came into direct contact with a blip, the blip vanished. The bogey honed in on a larger gray blip. "Oil rig. Ninety-three hands."

"Jesus Christ," someone muttered.

In the corner of his eye, he could see Chloe and Christian with their hands folded, eyes closed. Mariella from Columbia was pulling a rosary out of her pocket and hesitated when Sevier looked at her, but the Ranger nodded. "Can't hurt, can it?" Sevier observed.

Tendo fingered the one in his pocket. It'd never meant much more than an heirloom from his father's family before, but he supposed Sevier was right: it couldn't hurt. Not that it was likely to help either, he thought bitterly as the oil rig's blip vanished. Someone's breath was hitching somewhere behind him, but he didn't embarrass whoever it was by turning to look, and apart from that, almost nobody made a sound.

Sevier was calm and focused to a degree that astonished Tendo, knowing she'd been in combat only a few months before in another major population center. Everyone except for her jumped again when the first comm transmissions came over the speakers: "_Code Red issued for Hong Kong and Macau, Extreme Red Alert issued for Hong Kong. Horizon Brave re-deploying Victoria Harbor, ETA: 90 minutes."_

They'd gambled wrong by sending it to Shanghai. The kaiju was going to get to Hong Kong first. "How's the Civil Defense over there?" Yancy asked one of the Chinese candidates.

"Up until now, I thought it was good," Shan replied. "Many shelters, evacuation plans, warning drills. Now..." He shook his head. "There are over eight million people in Hong Kong. It's not enough."

_"Lamma Island, Visual Contact!" _It was still daylight there, late afternoon from the looks of it. There again was a sight that everyone in the room would once have scoffed at, having seen only in movies up until three years before.

"Another T-Rex lookalike," murmured Raleigh.

"Better arms than T-Rex," mused Brandon Pines. The Air Force pilot seemed to have a stick up his ass sometimes, but now he was sitting close to Lea Franklin, both of them eyewitnesses to Trespasser.

"Yeah," Tendo sighed, as Reckoner bowled over buildings and casually swept aside a ferry pier, reducing it an avalanche of kindling and metal into the East Lamma Channel. "Much better arms."

As they all tracked the red Jaeger blip moving south, the kaiju came ashore again in Ocean Park and began cutting a swath of destruction along the Western shore of Hong Kong Island. The roads were still full of cars, and buildings both ancient and modern crumbled like aluminum cans under Reckoner's feet.

Fighter jets divebombed him only to be swatted aside like flies - that was the one time that Tendo noticed Sevier wincing. He wondered what - or who - she was thinking about. Brandon Pines actually averted his eyes from the screens a few times. Tendo knew that less than half of the active duty pilots based in California had survived K-Day.

"_He's coming in at Union Square, heading straight for ICC Tower!"_

_"Structural collapse reported at New Yau Ma Tei Bunker, major flooding!"_

_"International Commerce Center, Kowloon Metro Station, you've got less than two minutes to get underground, he's coming right at you!"_

_"This is Support Chopper Squadron Epsilon, we're preparing for barrage at target's face. We need to blind him, don't take any of us out!"_

_"Acknowledged, we're aiming our anti-aircraft batteries at target's feet."_

A formation of choppers came blazing over the skyline firing missiles at Reckoner's eyes, while guns mounted on rooftops fired at its feet. The kaiju recoiled a few times and roared, slashing at the air, but then headed for the tallest skyscraper on the shoreline that much faster.

"Oh, fuck," hissed somebody.

"_This is Jaeger Horizon Brave, preparing for deployment at Kowloon Park." _

_Too late for the tower, _Tendo thought miserably, as the kaiju seemed to embrace it. The skyscraper came down on its side like a felled tree, raising a massive cloud of rubble even as the tactical display finally showed the Jaeger at combat readiness.

_"Horizon Brave neural handshake complete. Ready to deploy," _announced a female Jaeger was visible now on the video cameras, being released by the Jumphawks just outside a stadium to the east of the dust cloud. "_Moving to intercept._"

_"Target moving north towards civil service headquarters, Horizon Brave. If he takes it out, Hong Kong's going to have a problem!"_

"_Considering he just knocked down your largest skyscraper, I think you already have a problem," _said the male pilot's voice. "_Spotters, stay well above us, please, visibility is dropping fast."_

"_Roger, Horizon Brave, all units ascending."_

"_Eight hundred meters and closing," _said the female pilot.

"_Target is directly over Kowloon Station - structural collapses reported in the tunnels."_

"_Four hundred meters and closing. We're going to try and cut him off at Jordan Road - visual contact!"_

"_Horizon Brave, this is Lead Spotter Peregrine, we have no visual, repeat, no visual!"_

_"Acknowledged, we have him on instruments."_

"_Here we go!_" For a few moments, all the watchers could see was dust, then the kaiju came hurtling out of the debris of another row of skyscrapers and splashed back into the harbor. It came back up, well, roaring mad, as the Jaeger surged out of the dust after it, and the pair collided again.

Tendo sucked in his breath as Horizon Brave toppled into a highway interchange, and Reckoner headed back into the city. The Jaeger righted herself and gave chase. It was strange to remember that the mech itself was not the living being, but that there were two people in its head, one controlling its left side, the other controlling the right.

Who were the pilots? He wracked his brain for the stats that most of them had committed to memory - oh, that was right, a brother-sister team. Jing and Min Li, China's first test pilots, the minds behind much of the combat that the candidates were learning here at the Academy.

_"Kaiju Blue sighting - target wounded. Wēnshén!" _Min spat as Reckoner suddenly took a flying leap over several buildings. Unnecessarily, he added, "_Target can jump._"

_"He's moving northeast towards Coronation Towers," _Jing warned.

"_Aw, for the love of - Horizon Brave, I've been asked to inform you that Queen Elizabeth Hospital is not evacuated." _A stream of Mandarin profanity followed, and Sevier dropped her face into her palm.

"Fuck!" snarled Yancy. "Morons!"

Luckily for all concerned, Reckoner got himself distracted tipping over more skyscrapers, and Horizon Brave managed to catch up with him. The Lis tackled him into more buildings and managed to hang onto his ankle when he attempted to jump again, at the cost of pulverizing every structure in the vicinity with his thrashing.

_"Deploying cryo gun in three...two...one..._" Steam erupted from a cannon mount on Horizon's shoulder, and the kaiju screamed. The second cannon caught Reckoner in the throat, and he was definitely in serious trouble now, unable to rise. He rolled onto his back, and Horizon launched a salvo of close-range missiles into his stomach. _"Cannons recharging..._" Jing grunted.

_"Your range is dangerously close for a flash freeze, Horizon!_" a spotter warned.

"_Understood." _They crawled on top of the kaiju and wrapped their hands around its neck.

"Come on, come on, come on," Tendo could hear Raleigh whispering.

"_Horizon, watch your right arm!_"

Yelps rang out as the kaiju managed to get one of his arms free and clawed around Horizon's right shoulder, ripping chunks out of the cryo cannon, and tearing pieces of armor away.

"_Chòu biǎozi! Losing cannon pressure - discharge, discharging!_" More steam obscured the torso of the Jaeger and the kaiju, and they could hear someone coughing over the speakers. "_Cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài - right side oxygen line cut. Switching to portable," _Jing croaked.

_"Horizon, do you need backup?_"

_"Negative, we have thirty minutes, and I think we can finish him," _Min panted. _"Both kaiju arms immobilized... LOCCENT, do you have signature? We've lost instruments." _

"_Still getting signature, Horizon, but he's not moving._"

"_Not with his arms and legs frozen. Stand by, let us see what's inside." _Horizon picked up a random slab of sheet metal and began hacking apart the kaiju's stomach.

"_Horizon, I hate to be a spoilsport, but you're spraying Kaiju Blue everywhere._"

"_Don't worry, we have a plan. Signature?"_

_"Signature... down. That's down for the count, Horizon Brave, congratulations!"_

Whoops rang over the speakers, and Min announced, "_Now for our final trick, discharging left cannon._" They blasted coolant over the shredded torso, freezing the exposed organs. "_That should help with the contamination._"

"_Well done, Horizon Brave! This is LOCCENT Hong Kong, local time 15:56, declaring kaiju destroyed._"

As cheers sounded over the speakers, Ranger Sevier shot a faint smile at the suddenly-restless class. "_Now_ you may celebrate."

"WOOOOO!" Tendo was never sure who started whooping first or who came flying to their feet first. Well, nobody got any demerits. After all, they had permission.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon: **__Drift testing begins in earnest, and another Ranger team visits the Academy to give Class 2016-B some guidance. Tendo Choi is good at making friends, but discovers that even friendship doesn't make drifting easily, and the folks in charge start to notice the pairs with serious potential in __**Chapter Four: Teaming Up.**_

**PLEASE remember to review!**

**Translations (Mandarin****Chinese)**

_Wēnshén – god of plague_

_Chòu biǎozi – stinking whore_

_Cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài – fuck your ancestors to the eighteenth generation_

**Original Character Guide**

Cady Spencer - mid-20s, Filipino-American from Portland, Oregon. His mother's family is from Manila, and she lost all contact with them after Hundun attacked in 2014.

Brandon Pines - early 30s from Monterey, California, Air Force PAVE Hawk pilot. Flew missions against Trespasser on K-Day, one of the few surviving pilots.

Antwan Ferrier - Jamaican national, age 38, was a cruise ship steward in Cabo San Lucas when Kaiceph attacked.

Lea Franklin - age 17, lived in San Jose, California. Sole survivor of K-Day out of her family because she was traveling abroad with a school group. Has intense social anxiety due to PTSD, but trained for military service to avenge her family.

Christian and Chloe Warner - African-Americans from Atlanta, Georgia, ages 25 and 23, half-siblings from a blended family.

Devi and Susanti Hassan - first-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24.

Indra Hassan - Devi and Susanti's cousin, born in Jakarta, Indonesia, age 37.

Bao Wang and Shun Thou - first cousins, Chinese nationals from Bejing, early 20s, put off enrolling in technical school to attempt the Jaeger Academy

Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald - first cousins, Irish nationals, mid-20s. Their parents were NATO aid workers who went to San Francisco after K-Day, Brian's father and Janet's mother both died of exposure to Kaiju Blue toxin.

Jing and Min Li - China's first Rangers, co-founders and designers of the Jaeger Academy and curriculum, current pilots of Horizon Brave, siblings, early 30s.

**Familiar Faces**

Kennedy LaRue and Stephanie Lanphier - childhood friends from Seattle, age 18, high school athletes and cheerleaders who opted to try the Jaeger Academy after their college plans were derailed by the war. If you don't know more than that, well, wait and see!

Tamsin Sevier - retired Ranger, co-pilot of Coyote Tango with Stacker Pentecost. Grounded after being diagnosed with cancer. (At this stage, it has only been three or four months since her diagnosis, and major debilitating treatment doesn't always begin right away. So in this headcanon, she's still putting her hand in the war effort where she can.)

Dr. Caitlin Lightcap - age 30ish, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, inventor of the pons neural bridge and co-pilot of Brawler Yukon, the first Jaeger, until its destruction.


	4. Teaming Up

_**A/N:**__ This chapter is a little shorter than the others, but the next few are longer. (Perhaps I can be persuaded to update early tomorrow if there is interest. *wink*)_

**_Canon Note:_**_ In Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero, Marshall Pentecost referred to the Beckets as his "star team" when they were in the Academy. Part of this story's aim is to explore how that came about, and why some candidates succeeded while others failed. I don't think drift compatibility could be explained by something as simple as love or even shared history.  
><em>

**Chapter Four: Teaming Up**

_Jaeger Academy, Class 2016-B, Term 2_

_October 2016… _

Class 2016-B resumed the regular training schedule, though they now had a new set of combat data to chew on from Horizon Brave's duel with Reckoner. They also had the first round of scan and test results on potential drift compatibility.

No surprise, all the siblings' test results were promising, as were the other blood relatives and longtime friends. Knowing he was at a disadvantage from having started without a partner, Tendo was relieved to find himself not without prospects. He showed close range similarities with Cady Spencer, Antwan Ferrier, and little Lea Franklin, of all people.

Next came testing in the Kwoon as Marshall Pentecost looked on. The Gage twins put in an appearance to demonstrate. "It's not about beating your partner, but you shouldn't be holding back either," said one of them.

Tendo couldn't tell them apart. But he could see why Dr. Lightcap had mentioned things like dance as a way of measuring compatibility. When the Gages fought, it was almost like a dance, as if they had choreographed the fight. They matched each other hit for hit. Then they switched to synched drills in mirror image, side-by-side. When Tendo squinted, he could imagine Romeo Blue encompassing the two of them.

The family members were interesting to compare with the unrelated pairs. Chloe and Christian Warner were a little tentative, but they seemed to get into a good rhythm. Susanti and Devi Hassan went at each other like women possessed, which was incredibly fun to watch. Their cousin Indra came in next, and he matched up well with Devi, but not Susanti, which Tendo found intriguing. The cheerleaders, Kennedy LaRue and Stephanie Lanphier, were still adjusting to the form of the fight, but clearly could read each other well.

Raleigh Becket came at Yancy like a bat out of hell, but Yancy saw most of his hits coming. Out of all the pre-formed pairs, they reminded Tendo most of the Gage twins' motion.

Marshall Pentecost remained dispassionate through the whole thing, but Tendo saw his brow furrow as he watched the Beckets. When they finished their first round (four hits to three), he ordered, "Again. This time, Yancy Becket, attack. Raleigh Becket, defend."

The pair blinked at him, then Raleigh shrugged and wiped the sweat from his face. "Yes, sir."

Yancy had better mastery of the moves, no question. He was just a little bigger, just a little taller, just a little faster. But his advance on Raleigh was astonishingly similar to the attack Raleigh had launched earlier, and Tendo really doubted that he was consciously imitating baby bro.

The Gage twins' poker faces weren't quite as good as Pentecost's; they raised their eyebrows in unison. And the broad grin the Becket boys exchanged when they finished with four hits to three (again) was so like the Gages that Tendo would've pegged them for twins too.

"So that's what it looks like," he murmured to Cady. "Hel-_lo_ second cut."

"Ten bucks?"

"You're on."

"While we're at it, want to take a stab at it ourselves?"

"You're on for that too."

Antwan shot them a pained look when he wound up with Lea as his only prospective partner. "Ooh, awkward," someone muttered. It really was: the biggest and smallest, also youngest and oldest in the class up against each other.

Lea wasn't as good as some of the other women, though she clearly knew all the positions and had strong form. But she kept winning because Antwan simply couldn't bring himself to go all out. Pentecost was looking irritated and even Little Lea was showing signs of annoyance. "I'm not made of glass," she muttered at him at one point.

"I'm sorry," he near-pleaded, turning to Pentecost. "I just... _can't_!"

Pentecost sighed. "And as a result, it is highly unlikely that you will be compatible in the drift. Compatibility is about trust, as Dr. Lightcap has already explained."

"It isn't that I don't trust you," Antwan protested. "It is myself!"

Lea avoided his eyes and glared at the floor. The other girls in the class were glaring hard enough at Antwan to make up for it. Most of the guys were just looking uncomfortable.

Another ice-breaker was called for that night, and things did thaw out through judicious application of table tennis. Lea won the tournament, much to the girls' gratification, and nobody believed her when she claimed she didn't intentionally peg Antwan in the nose.

Raleigh seemed more delighted than offended when she slaughtered him in the final round, and he and Yancy challenged her to a few rounds in the Kwoon. She was completely over-matched in sparring against Yancy, and admitted as much. Raleigh too was cautious at first, but gradually got over it, and Lea managed to hold her own and even took him down a few times.

"He's a good sport," Tendo murmured to Yancy as they watched Raleigh hit the mat, laughing all the way.

"He is that, always has been," Yancy agreed.

"Well, hey, if you two turn out to not be compatible, maybe she's a possibility for him," said Cady, but now Yancy shook his head.

"Uh-uh, then I'd have to kill her. I'm not letting him run off hunting kaiju without me."

Tendo laughed. "Mr. Protective over here! Fat chance of that if your tests results are any indication. You two are top of the class."

* * *

><p>Sync testing was the moment that a lot of them would be eliminated, Dr. Lightcap warned them. "And bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that this is not a full drift. You'll experience some sensations, impressions, sights and sounds through your partner, but here is your analogy."<p>

She was lecturing them in front of a video showing two streams of colored smoke, one yellow and one blue. Little wisps floated from one into the other and back. "A true drift would look more like this." The streams blended through each other into a column of green.

"This is the moment that you will also need to be honest with _yourselves_ about what you can tolerate. Recoiling in your mind is a very normal, understandable reflex - and it can kill a drift. That's why most people aren't drift compatible. We'll be able to detect some of that reaction in the instruments, but part of your job and your duty here is to be truthful with the analysts about your tolerance."

"Uh, Tendo?" said Cady awkwardly when they got their test time assignment. "I, uh, think I ought to warn you about something."

Tendo frowned, then slapped his forehead and started to laugh. "I think I can guess, but go ahead." Cady hesitated. "Man, just say it."

"I like guys." Seeing no shock, Cady eyed him, as if he wasn't sure whether to be offended or relieved. "What do you mean you could guess?"

Tendo shrugged "Well, of all the confessions you'd want to make before you mind-meld with somebody, sex preference has to rank in the top three. Seriously, it's cool." He clapped Cady on the shoulder. "I like women, but it's not like I'd want to kill myself if I changed my mind all of a sudden. At this point, I just figure we'll let it run its course."

They came in behind Chloe and Christian Warner, who hurried out of the pons room with embarrassed expressions. "Oo-kay, I don't think that went so well," muttered Cady.

Then it was their turn. It was by far the weirdest experience of Tendo's life.

He did feel like he'd suddenly turned to liquid or smoke and was spreading out, and his impulse was immediately to suck himself back in. _Holy shit! _Had that been him or Cady? There were flickers, like reminding himself of something he'd forgotten, faces he didn't know - he saw single, then he saw double and squeezed his eyes shut. Sensations - body memory - _fuck! - _impulses - "oh my god!" Who'd said that?

"Focus, Spencer, you're resisting too much," said a strange, echoing voice.

"Good, Choi, good..."

"Raise your right hand." He did - no he didn't. "Now the left." He/they did. "There you go." He couldn't breathe. "Inhale, Spencer. Breathe deeper." Now he could. "Good. Okay, dialing it back down."

They were side by side in the testing units, blinking at the doctors, then at each other. "Holy shit," Tendo breathed. "That was weird."

And from the look Dr. Lightcap gave them as she examined her screen, Tendo guessed he knew it was coming. "Well, this is only the first test."

"But?" asked Cady.

"But... you're at forty-seven percent. Starting range for a promising match is above eighty."

"Ay-ay-ay," muttered Tendo. "His fault or mine?" Cady winced, and he raised a hand. "I'm just kidding, bro. No hard feelings either way."

* * *

><p>They ran three more tests that week, and Tendo Choi and Cady Spencer peaked out at sixty-eight percent. Good improvement, but not enough. Ironically, when they switched out partners, both of them tested higher with Lea Franklin than they had with each other. Antwan Ferrier of Jamaica, the eldest of the class, jovial and friendly to all, seemingly with little interest in being reserved or restrained, was even less compatible with his partners. He was one of the first ones to admit defeat when he didn't crack fifty percent with anybody.<p>

Tendo and Lea peaked at seventy-nine percent, but they had almost no improvement. Tendo had to admit to himself that he felt some private reservations about partnering with the girl, not merely her size or age or gender, but that she was so damn quiet. It made for a, well, boring prospect. They went a number of rounds in the Kwoon trying to improve their rapport, but although they could learn each other's styles on the mat or at table tennis, it just... wasn't _fun_. Tendo wanted a partner he could have fun with, laugh the way Raleigh and Yancy did.

On the other hand, drifting didn't seem as fun for a lot of the related pairs as expected, even the ones who were close. Raleigh and Yancy tested at eighty-eight percent on their first round, which was excellent, but they looked no less shell-shocked than anybody else. Chloe and Christian improved a little, but their match percentage was a lot lower than the instructors had hoped for.

Tendo noticed the people from conservative backgrounds had a lot more trouble. The Australian-Indonesian sisters were an exception; they were another pair that broke eighty percent, albeit on the second try.

By the end of the fourth week, more than half of the class had been cut, Tendo included. Twelve pairs remained, and four of those were struggling.

"You bummed, man?" asked Cady as they all mulled over their formal letters that they were no longer eligible to proceed in Jaeger pilot training.

"A little," Tendo admitted. "I knew it was a long shot, we all did." He only needed a few minutes to think about his next step. "I'm staying, though. I'll take the Corps Aptitude Test now, see where they want to steer me."

"Yeah, me too."

"Me three," said a voice behind them.

"Hey, there, Little Lea! I'm sorry," Tendo told her sincerely. "I'd buy you a drink, but you're not legal yet."

She was quiet as usual for several minutes, watching their fellow now-ex-candidates reading and re-reading their dismissal letters, and finally asked, "Do you think anyone will actually leave now?"

"Brandon's going back to El Segundo; he said if he didn't make Jaeger pilot, he was staying with the Air Force. We may see him again on support, just not with the Corps. Mariella was pretty upset. She sounded like she might go home."

Cady was scribbling on a napkin. "So here's who's still in." He shot them all a wicked grin. "Gambling's not against the code of conduct, and I think we all know why."

"Heyyyy, we may not be drift compatible, but I like the way you think! Only one question: bracket or no bracket?"

Thus commenced the betting, which Tendo later learned was almost the exact same process that every Academy class had engaged in since the procedures had started. It was part pool, part March Madness (well, October madness) bracket with everyone contributing fifty dollars. The bet was on which teams would be declared Ranger Ready, and in what order, not unlike horse racing.

Some, like Lea, spread their pots around more than one team. Indra Hassan was out, but he happily bet his entire pot on his cousins. Tendo bet his entire fifty on the Beckets being the first team to land a Jaeger.

He won.

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming Soon: _**_Back to Raleigh's POV for the results of the second cut! The Gage twins give the Becket brothers some serious advice, and then devastating news from home leaves Raleigh and Yancy with some hard choices to make in __**Chapter Five: Peaks and Troughs**__._

**PLEASE remember to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Cady Spencer - mid-20s, Filipino-American from Portland, Oregon. His mother's family is from Manila, and she lost all contact with them after Hundun attacked in 2014.

Brandon Pines - early 30s from Monterey, California, Air Force PAVE Hawk pilot. Flew missions against Trespasser on K-Day, one of the few surviving pilots.

Antwan Ferrier - Jamaican national, age 38, was a cruise ship steward in Cabo San Lucas when Kaiceph attacked.

Lea Franklin - age 17, lived in San Jose, California. Sole survivor of K-Day out of her family because she was traveling abroad with a school group. Has intense social anxiety due to PTSD, but trained for military service to avenge her family.

Christian and Chloe Warner - African-Americans from Atlanta, Georgia, ages 25 and 23, half-siblings from a blended family.

Devi and Susanti Hassan - first-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24.

Indra Hassan - Devi and Susanti's cousin, born in Jakarta, Indonesia, age 37.

**Familiar Faces**

Kennedy LaRue and Stephanie Lanphier - childhood friends from Seattle, age 18, high school athletes and cheerleaders who opted to try the Jaeger Academy after their college plans were derailed by the war. (If you don't know more than that, well, wait and see!)

Dr. Caitlin Lightcap - age 30ish, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, inventor of the pons neural bridge and co-pilot of Brawler Yukon, the first Jaeger, until its destruction.


	5. Peaks and Troughs

_**A/N:** On the canon, Travis Beacham gives Raleigh's birthday as December 11, 1998, and Yancy's as November 7, 1995, which puts Raleigh as 17 and Yancy as 20 when they start at the Jaeger Academy. Based on the fact that in the movie, Mako didn't seem to have experienced full-on drift and the risk of rabbit-chasing until she partnered with Raleigh, I'm operating on the theory that full-on drifting didn't begin for candidates until they passed the second cut and started simulator training in the third term. I'll go into my theory on the reasons for that curriculum structure a little later in this story._

**Chapter Five: Peaks and Troughs**

_Jaeger Academy Class 2016-B, Term 2._

_October 2016…_

By the final round of Drift Sync Testing, Raleigh was constantly marveling at how he and Yancy had ended up here. To think that it had all started as a bet on whether they could even get admitted, let alone get through those insane martial arts and kaiju science intensives in the first trimester. Yet here they were. And the great Caitlin Lightcap, inventor of the neural bridge and pilot of the first-ever Jaeger, war heroine and genius, was shooting them little grins over the top of the monitors that suggested she was optimistic about the results.

They were going to make the second cut. Top of the class, Yancy and Raleigh Becket.

They just might be Jaeger pilots.

They were starting to get used to the disconcerting double-senses that came with the pons, though they knew that if they got through this cut, they'd move on to a full neural handshake. By all accounts, that was even more intense, and even some people who seemed compatible before weren't able to bond enough.

Their first-cut class of sixty candidates in August was down to six pairs in October. There were three sets of siblings: Raleigh and Yancy, Devi and Susanti Hassan, Chloe and Christian Warner, two sets of cousins, Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald, and Bao Wang and Shan Thou, and finally Stephanie Lanphier and Kennedy LaRue, not related but longtime friends.

Tendo informed them that the eliminated candidates had instituted a betting pool on who would make the final cut and end up with a Jaeger. "I put my entire pot on you two, so you better deliver!"

Yancy nodded gravely and looked at Raleigh. "You hear that, Rals? As if we needed any more pressure, now we definitely can't blow this because our man Tendo'll be out fifty bucks."

"Now that's what I call motivation," Raleigh agreed, feigning stress.

It was getting stressful towards the end of the term. Raleigh was tired, wrung-out, and felt like his brains were silly putty, being stretched into weird shapes. They still had to maintain knowledge of all the combat drills, tactics, engineering, and kaiju science that they'd learned in the first trimester, not to mention keep in shape, and it was making for incredibly long days.

Raleigh was very much looking forward to the week-long break that would start tomorrow - assuming they weren't cut, of course. Yancy kept reminding him not to take anything for granted... but from the hours they were spending floating in and out of each other's heads, he knew that Yancy was, in his heart, no less optimistic about their chances.

Finally, electrode-covered caps hummed, and through the glass window into the monitoring room, they saw the lights change to signal the test completed. Dr. Lightcap tapped the intercom. "That's it, gentlemen. Once you're disconnected, clean up, loosen up, get some lunch, and be back at 1300 to discuss results."

"Yes, ma'am."

* * *

><p>They were both so antsy that they didn't have much appetite, but made themselves eat and went through the entire stretching and limbering routine just for something to do. With an hour left to kill before reassembling, they were playing chess in a corner of the mess hall when the Gage twins came in. "Somehow we didn't picture you two playing something so highbrow."<p>

Yancy chuckled and beckoned them to pull up chairs. "We traveled a lot. Long trips, planes, trains, automobiles, any long games were good. We've got a travel set at home that's magnetic so the pieces don't get lost. If we come back, we'll bring it with us."

"Good plan." The twins shared a sly grin. "Dr. Lightcap asked us to chat with you over lunch. Give you a heads-up about what to expect next term."

Raleigh's stomach jumped, and he couldn't help the shit-eating grin that crossed his face. "Next term?" Yancy kicked him under the table, but that same sizzle of excitement was visible in his face too, even as he tried to keep a lid on it.

The Gages raised their hands in unison. "Of course, the final decision is Marshall Pentecost's and the Academy Board's, but, well..." One of them winked. Raleigh still couldn't tell them apart. "Seriously, today's exciting, but the least we can do is give you fair warning about what comes next: It only gets harder."

Yancy nodded, calming himself down better than Raleigh, and matter-of-factly turned over his king, conceding the game even though Raleigh was nowhere near putting him in check. Raleigh swept the pieces and board back into their box so they could give the Rangers their full attention. "Fire away."

"Disclaimer established: assuming for the sake of argument you advance," the twins smirked. "First day back you get full-time Psych Analysts assigned to you, a whole team. That part... maybe more for guys than girls, I think, it can be _weird_. Not just drifting, but having to talk about _everything_."

"Is the full drift really that much stronger than what we've been doing?" Raleigh asked curiously.

"Yes," the twins chorused. "The second term testing was like..." One of them contemplated the chess box. "It was like just having an extra pair of senses. Maybe being just a little tuned into another person's radio channel."

That was a good analogy, Raleigh decided.

"Full drift?" the Gages went on. "You will be _in _each other's heads. Memories in full 3D, Technicolor - you've heard about chasing the rabbit?" Yancy and Raleigh nodded. "Be warned - it'll happen, and not just your own rabbits either. Memories you share, you'll suddenly remember from the other guy's perspective. It's really hard at first not to just walk into those memories you don't recognize. Or the ones you do that are intense."

"Bad intense or good intense?" asked Raleigh.

"Both." One of the twins pointed his thumb at the other. "Bruce was in a car accident when we were in high school." Okay, so that was Trevin on the left, Bruce on the right. "I was in the car behind him - on our way home from a game - when some drunk fucker T-boned him. Almost killed him and his girlfriend. It took us four tries to stop chasing that rabbit. We overcompensated for awhile and chased some of the good ones, parties, vacations, that kind of thing."

"So how do you... avoid either?" Yancy mused.

"The drift is silence. Floating. I don't know who gave it the name, but it's a good metaphor for how it's supposed to feel. You have to let the images and the senses wash by and not react to them. Don't mistake us, guys; it's _hard_, at first. And, well..." Bruce and Trevin exchanged a conspiratorial, somewhat-sheepish grin and leaned forward, lowering their voices. "You have to learn to not judge."

"Ohh, boy." Yancy buried his face in his arms, and Raleigh felt himself turning red. "I think we get what you're saying."

"We've had candidates who were in the same compatibility range as you - really high - at the end of Term Two, only to scrub out in Term Three because they just couldn't take the weirdness." Trevin glanced around to make sure they weren't in earshot of anyone. "The human imagination can do fucked-up things. If you want to be Rangers, you just have to accept that and not think it makes you some kind of unnatural pervert - or your partner."

Now Raleigh and Yancy were both scarlet-faced, and the twins were starting to blush too. "So you mean it's not just like... walking in on someone?" Raleigh said slowly, barely above a mutter. That was how he'd pictured it, how he'd framed the sensations and flickers of recall that he'd gotten from Yancy so far - just let himself cringe and quickly looking the other way.

The twins shook their heads. "_Way_ more than that."

_Holy shit. _Raleigh couldn't look at Yancy anymore. This sure was taking a lot of the wind out of their sails anticipating what would follow after making the second cut.

"We're not trying to rain on the parade, you know. On the contrary, I think you know everyone's got some high hopes for you two. There's still a lot about the drift that even the doctor who invented it doesn't know. The more prepared the candidates can be, the better chance you'll succeed."

He heard Yancy take a slow, deep breath. "We appreciate it, believe me. Thanks. How, uh..." Raleigh dared a quick glance to meet his eyes, then they both quickly looked at the twins again. "How do you... cope with it? The weird stuff?"

Both twins went a little redder. "You can't recoil, or try to pretend it doesn't happen. Trying to cover it up is the worst thing you can do for anything in the headspace - it damages the handshake. You just have to..." Bruce put a fingertip on his nose, then drew it out like a line. "Refocus on what you're trying to do. Don't panic. The only person who can possibly know what's in your head is your partner, and you have to trust that your partner won't judge. That you understand it's not that there's something wrong with either of you, that your minds go weird places sometimes. Believe us on this one point: it happens to _everybody_ who drifts, okay? _ Everybody_. This isn't a conversation we'd have with anyone who wasn't about to go through it."

Raleigh nodded. The twins exchanged a look, then smiled and sat back. "We'll let you finish your game," said Trevin, even though they all knew that no way would the Beckets be interested in chess after that conversation. "Good luck this afternoon. You guys are promising."

With that, they walked away.

There were thirty minutes left until they had to be back in the lab to discuss their final results. Yancy got up and got a couple of bottles of water, then handed one to him. "What do you think?" Raleigh mumbled once he could talk.

"It, uh... sounds like a bit more than we imagined, but..." Yancy stared at his bottle, swirling it as if it was a fine wine or contained the secrets of the universe. "I think... we'd be stupid to back out now. Without even trying." He took another deep breath, then chugged half his bottle. "We should see it through as far as we can."

"Yeah." Agreeing with Yancy tended to come to Raleigh automatically, but now his brother looked at him, as if he was hoping for something a little firmer. So Raleigh nodded and took a gulp of his own, relishing its coldness. "I know when... when we started, it was just a whim. A bet, we weren't that serious. I wouldn't have cared if we'd scrubbed out with everybody else - most of 'em do." Yancy nodded. "But it'd be... kind of embarrassing to blow it now just because we got scared."

"Right." Yancy held up his bottle with a weak grin, and they "toasted" and felt the tension starting to fade. "We see it through. Far as we can get, so either way, we hold our heads up."

"Cheers." Grinning came more easily to Raleigh then too, and they even got enough appetite back to buy a sandwich, though they had to eat it in a hurry.

* * *

><p>When they got to the lab, Dr. Lightcap informed them that Marshall Pentecost had been delayed by a priority call, but she had already called several of the pairs out of the room. Raleigh did a quick mental assessment of the pairs that remained: the Hassans, who had the second-highest percentage, Kennedy and Steffie, who were third, and Brian and Janet, who were fifth but had shown drastic improvement since their first drift. Four pairs.<p>

He fidgeted, then after awhile he started pacing, until Yance muttered, "Sit _down_, Rals!" He supposed he was acting like a kid, but he felt like the nervous energy was going to make him explode.

After an interminable, silent wait, Dr. Lightcap came back in with Marshall Pentecost. "Ladies and gentlemen, the eight of you have been approved to advance to the final phase of training."

There was a low, intense intake of breath from - Raleigh was pretty sure - everyone in the room, and he was proud of himself for not bouncing or grinning like an ass, though he did smile. From the corner of his eye, he could see most of the others smiling. Not Yancy; he was imitating Pentecost's so-professional detachment.

Pentecost went on, "The third term will begin seven days from tomorrow. You are all granted leave to depart the premises and do whatever you wish. I advise you to make the most of this rest period; you will need it. Ranger Readiness training is no less strenuous than the first two terms of this Academy, and in many ways, it is even more mentally demanding. However, I also caution you that as officers of the PPDC, your behavior continues to reflect on your readiness, and will be taken into account."

Raleigh supposed it would be naturally of some people - especially guys - to go on a crazed drinking and celebrating binge and brag to the world. But at the moment, all he wanted to do was sleep for the whole seven days. Well, maybe turn a few cartwheels, scream at the sky from the top of Mount McKinley, but other than that, sleep. Take a page from Yancy's book of contentment and stay in bed all day. Maybe some yoga.

He had to force himself to pay attention to their instructions for what to do when they returned, and the instruction packet shook in his hands as they were handed out. To his amusement (and relief) he wasn't the only one acting a little shaky, though Yancy was being Joe Cool, as usual.

With a congratulations from Dr. Lightcap, they were dismissed. And Raleigh jumped when they came out of the lab doors to an explosion of applause and found almost the entire class waiting for them.

At the front of the crowd was Tendo, whistling with two fingers in his mouth. It put a little damper on Raleigh's elation to see Chloe and Christian among them along with the other rejected pair. They were all mustering smiles and applauding hard, but especially in Chloe's case, Raleigh could see the redness in her eyes.

Yancy took the lead there and pushed through the crowd and held out his arms. She fell into them willingly, and Raleigh followed to put one arm around Christian's shoulders and another around Shan's. "I'm sorry, Chlo," said Yance.

"It's okay, it's okay," she chanted, as if to herself as well as them. "We're okay. We kinda knew it was coming."

"You are _all_ amazing," Cady Spencer told them firmly. "Out of three thousand applicants for this term, you made it to the top twelve. Be proud of yourselves!"

"We are proud," Bao agreed, straightening next to Shan. "We are going back home to finish school, but then we will apply for support crew placement. Jaeger Engineering has offered us a tuition grant."

That sparked another round of applause as Chloe and Christian nodded as well. "After all, it takes how many support crew just to get one Jaeger launch ready?" asked Yancy.

"Six hundred thirty-nine," said Chloe immediately. "And that's not counting the people who design and build the things."

"Thus speaketh the accountant," Christian chuckled. "She's already got the Logistics Department sniffing her out. I'm not sure what they'll do with a singer, but I figure they've got an opening for a janitor or something somewhere."

There were laughs and snorts, and Yancy playfully punched him. "Have some faith in yourself, Mister! You got skills!"

"What about you finalists? You going home?" Tendo pointed at Yancy and Raleigh. "You two can't get out of it, you don't even need to travel that far."

"Ooh, we need to see if we can get a flight or a train," exclaimed Kennedy to Steffie.

The Hassan sisters shrugged and looked at Indra. "Going all the way back to Australia would be difficult, but we thought we would take a trip somewhere. Is it too late to see the leaves changing?"

"Probably, unless you go a long way south," Raleigh admitted.

"You could come with us," Stephanie suggested. "The flight time to Seattle isn't that long, and there are some fun things to do."

"We'll see if there's something that'll get us to Panama and back in time," said Brian, linking arms with Janet. "If not, we'll just wait until the holidays."

Just then, Marshall Pentecost came out of the lab. "Beckets. I need to speak with you."

Raleigh exchanged a puzzled look with Yancy, but they followed him back into the lab. Pentecost led them through the meeting room to a smaller office and closed the door. Raleigh felt his skin starting to prickle, a sense of foreboding creeping over the excitement of the day's events.

"Have a seat."

They sat, and the tingling intensified along with his stomach starting to churn. He couldn't help casting a quick glance at his brother, but Yancy was stony-faced, like he too was bracing himself for a sudden change in the wind.

Pentecost looked... reluctant? He sat down behind the desk and said, "To begin with, let me also congratulate you, gentlemen. As you know by now, your test results are extremely promising. However, I received a call for this afternoon regarding a personal matter, and I'm afraid I have bad news."

Raleigh's stomach dropped under his chair with a splash. His skin burned, his fingers tightened on the arms of the seat, and he _knew_.

"Your mother passed away this morning."

For an embarrassingly long time, he sat completely rigid. His mind spun. _Mom?_

She'd been sick for so long. They'd suspected it was cancer even before K-Day. In and out of the hospital for the past three years, but she'd never quit smoking. One of the last times he and Jazmine had really felt close was six weeks after K-Day, when Jazmine had lost it and started screaming and crying at Mom, begging and demanding that she quit. Raleigh had broken down too, and Dad had ordered them both out of the house and to stop being brats. Yancy had been inside for awhile longer, talking to her, but they'd heard Mom start shouting again. Then Yance had come out and put an arm around each of them as they sat under the trees, and Raleigh and Jazmine had both been crying.

They had known for a long time it would end this way. The doctors had thrown up their hands; what could they do when she wouldn't quit?! She'd encouraged Yancy's notion that he and Raleigh try for the Academy, applauded happily when they showed her the acceptance letters.

She'd been in the hospital again when they went home for the break after making the first cut. She'd looked so thin with the oxygen machine next to her in that bed, but she'd been dismissive when Yancy tried to talk to her about how she was doing.

She'd told them not to worry, she'd be fine, not to defer returning to training. But it hadn't seemed... that bad.

Had it?

Was he supposed to cry now? Was he supposed to want to? Not want to?

He shouldn't cry at the Academy, let alone in front of the C.O., but... she was his mom. His mom was dead, and he just felt... numb and tingly, like he'd pinched every nerve in his body.

Over the buzzing in his ears, he heard Yancy say steadily, "Thank you for telling us, sir."

Pentecost was composed as ever, but his eyes were gentle. In a weird way, his level voice was comforting, like a pillar to brace against. "The final term will begin seven days from tomorrow, and it isn't possible to alter the schedule. However, if you wish to defer and try again next term, I can tell you from the analysts studies that it's very rare for drift compatibility to change radically even over time. Therefore, although you would have to repeat the first two terms in the spring, there are not likely to be any barriers to passing, and your chances of being at this same point in six months are good." He stood up. "You'll want to discuss it. That's why I had this meeting here. I will step out now."

"Thank you, sir," Raleigh mumbled automatically. Yancy stood up as Pentecost did, and Raleigh hurriedly copied him, though he felt clumsy and disconnected as they waited for the door to close again.

He looked at his brother, then quickly looked away. Yancy was going for the stiff upper lip approach, and he was right; here, they had to keep it together. _But our mom's dead... gone... _whispered a confused, helpless voice in the back of his mind.

"We..." Yancy cleared his throat. "We shouldn't back out now. It's... she'd tell us not to give up. She'd tell us... be strong."

_She never got to find out we made the second cut, _Raleigh thought dully. Aloud, he murmured, "Okay." _You know what to do. You always do. Good. I can't think. _

"Okay. Let's just get home, and we'll do... whatever needs doing." Yancy took a deep breath and gave Raleigh a quick pat on the shoulder. "Let's just keep a grip on it 'till we're home."

"Yeah." It took several deep breaths for Raleigh, but he managed to look Yancy in the eye again. Yancy nodded encouragingly. "Right. Okay, let's go. We need to tell - someone we'll be back."

They walked quickly and robotically out down the hall to see Marshall Pentecost talking with Dr. Lightcap outside her office. "We're staying on, sir," said Yancy. Raleigh made himself nod. _Just don't think, don't feel, not until we're home. Focus. _

Pentecost nodded briskly, but Dr. Lightcap's sad, pained eyes burned at Raleigh, and he wanted to flinch away from her. "You have the Academy's condolences, gentlemen. We will see you next week."

"Thank you, sir." Dr. Lightcap looked like she might say something, but Pentecost moved just a little in front of her, and nodded his dismissal. Raleigh wondered how Yancy could be so calm. He felt like he was drowning.

It only got worse when they found the whole damn class was waiting, looking frantic. _Oh shit oh shit I can't _- Raleigh stopped and stepped to the side, hoping it wasn't so obvious he was hiding behind Yancy as Tendo blurted, " What's going on, guys? They _cannot_ have changed their minds!"

Yancy quickly raised his hands. "No, no, we're still in. Sorry, guys, we have to go, it's - we've had a death in the family, that's what he was telling us."

"Ohh!" The hisses and little cries of dismay from some of the girls were horrible. Embarrassing, awkward, and it felt like they were wrapping something tight around his neck.

Yancy, thank god, kept the momentum up. "Yeah, it's - thanks, everyone, but we have to go. We're staying, we'll be back in a week, we just need to get home. C'mon," he beckoned to Raleigh, and Raleigh hurried after him trying not to look around as the group parted around them.

"Okay, no problem!"

"I'm so sorry, guys!"

"We'll be thinking of you!"

Raleigh wanted to cover his ears, but he just made himself stay straight and walked along with Yancy as fast as he could. It was a relief that once they were in their room, Yancy was in no less of a rush than he was, his expression more pinched as if he too was having trouble holding it all in. "Just 'till we get home," Yancy kept muttering. "We just have to keep it in until we're home, then we can figure it all out. Let's just get our stuff and get home."

Raleigh wondered who he was talking to, but it didn't really matter; the litany wasn't a bad one to say or hear. They shoveled necessities into their duffels and stumbled over each other and were fumbling around for the ferry schedule when a knock on the door made them both jump a mile. "Beckets?"

Yancy gave Raleigh a weak, dazed grin and straightened to answer it. "Sir?"

One of the MPs was at the door. "There's a personnel plane leaving for Anchorage in an hour. Marshall Pentecost asked me to tell you that you're authorized to take it."

It was too much information to process. Raleigh just blinked, and Yancy glanced at the timetable in his head, then put it on his bunk. "Thank you, sir. We'll do that." Once the door closed again, he turned and started to reach for Raleigh, then caught himself and just gestured for them to go.

They kept their heads down and made no more eye contact than absolutely necessary going to the airstrip, and said nothing but mumbled courtesies on the short flight from Kodiak to Anchorage. Raleigh kept his eyes down and avoided even looking out the window.

Rather than call Dad or Jazmine from the airport, they took a cab straight to the house. Pulling up to the curb, Raleigh shuffled out of the car and stared at the porch, at Jazmine at the window... and felt an intense urge to leap back into the cab. Yancy had to go around him to get their duffels and slung both over one shoulder so he could tug Raleigh along.

Jazmine disappeared from the window and opened the door for them. Yancy dropped their duffels next to it and shut it behind them, and the three of them stared at each other. Raleigh wondered dizzily if this was what it felt like seeing a kaiju right over your head.

_Mom is dead. We're home. Now what? _

Yancy held out an arm to Jazmine, and she stepped towards him like a wind-up toy. Once her face was in Yancy's shirt, Raleigh heard her start to cry. Yancy looked over the top of her head at him and held out his other arm. Raleigh went too, putting his arms around them both and feeling Yancy's around himself. He didn't cry... at least he didn't think he did.

Yancy didn't.

**_To be continued..._**

_**Coming Soon: **__ One day Raleigh would tell Mako Mori that "In combat, you make decisions, and you have to live with the consequences," but that's true of life even outside combat. As they prepare for their mother's funeral, the Becket brothers have a decision to make that pits their future in the Jaeger Program against the future of what remains of their family in __**Chapter Six: The Choices You Live With**__._

**PLEASE remember to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Christian and Chloe Warner - African-Americans from Atlanta, Georgia, ages 25 and 23, half-siblings from a blended family.

Devi and Susanti Hassan - first-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24.

Indra Hassan - Devi and Susanti's cousin, born in Jakarta, Indonesia, age 37.

Bao Wang and Shan Thou - first cousins, Chinese nationals from Bejing, early 20s, put off enrolling in technical school to attempt the Jaeger Academy.

Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald - first cousins, Irish nationals, mid-20s. Their parents were NATO aid workers who went to San Francisco after K-Day. Brian's father and Janet's mother both died of exposure to Kaiju Blue toxin, leading the cousins to enlist in the PPDC.

**Familiar Faces**

Kennedy LaRue and Stephanie Lanphier - childhood friends from Seattle, age 18, high school athletes and cheerleaders who opted to try the Jaeger Academy after their college plans were derailed by the war. (If you don't know more than that, well, wait and see!)

Dr. Caitlin Lightcap - age 30ish, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, inventor of the pons neural bridge and co-pilot of Brawler Yukon, the first Jaeger, until its destruction.


	6. The Choices You Live With

_**A/N: **__ This was a very hard chapter to write. It follows the novelization canon, which shows the end result of Raleigh and Yancy's relationships with their father and younger sister, but is entirely my invention on how they got from drift memories of what appeared to be a happy childhood to apparent estrangement._

_**Trigger Warning:**__ This chapter portrays a personality disorder through the immature and unsympathetic eyes of a teenaged brother who views the sufferer as a rival. Jazmine suffers from borderline personality disorder, but Raleigh doesn't realize that, and although Yancy has some inkling of it, neither of them are equipped with the knowledge or support system to understand, let alone deal with it. There are no saints in this story, but very few human villains (well, okay, I don't think much of their father knowing the choices he made) and Jazmine is not one. _

**Chapter Six: The Choices You Live With**

_Anchorage, Alaska, October, 2016…_

"The funeral is Sunday," Dad told them as they all stared at sandwiches over the kitchen table. Jazmine got up and tossed hers in the trash, then wandered out of the house. Dad waited until she'd gone, then slid some papers towards Yancy. "I want you to sign these."

Yancy had looked as drained and numb as Raleigh felt until that moment, but now he looked shocked. "Huh?"

"It's only a year. She'll be seventeen in February, so just a year after that. She can even stay with Diane down the street if you want to finish Jaeger training, until she's eighteen." Dad gestured absently at Raleigh. "I don't think you have anything to worry about with him in the Academy, not so close to his eighteenth birthday."

Yancy stared at him. "What about you? Aren't you supposed to be her guardian?"

"I..." their father dropped his eyes. "I can't."

Raleigh was completely confused. They were talking about Jazmine - guardianship? But that would only come down to Yancy if Dad wasn't... "What're you talking about?"

"I'm going," his father said. "After the funeral. I'm getting a new job, going... away." He glanced at them, saw their faces, and looked down again. "I have to."

Raleigh's head was swimming again. Nothing made sense. "I don't understand," he said. "Going where? How long?"

Apparently, Yancy understood. As Dad seemed to shrink, Yancy looked like he might Hulk out. Raleigh felt lost, and increasingly scared. In a low, hard voice, frigidly polite, his brother said, "Raleigh, would you excuse us? Go sit with Jazz. Let Dad and me talk in private."

Like he had no will to refuse, Raleigh slowly got up and left the room. He found Jazmine out on the curb, staring at the sky. For a few minutes, from behind in the darkness, she could have been Mom. But there was no glow of a cigarette ember in her hand, no smell of smoke. _No Mom. No mother anymore. She's gone and she's not coming back. _

"He's told you, hasn't he?" Jazmine said.

Raleigh sat down next to her. "I don't get it. He's leaving? Where to?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. He won't say. Maybe he doesn't know." She snorted and added roughly, "He definitely doesn't care."

_Mom's gone and Dad's going. That's why he wants Yancy to be Jazmine's guardian._ A new emotion pierced the fog of shock and numbness - something ugly and shameful. He didn't _want _Yancy to be Jazmine's guardian. Yeah, sure, it was only a year - a year and a few months - but for all that time, he'd be responsible for her. Here they were heading towards being Jaeger pilots, and Yancy would have to be like Jazmine's dad?!

It was terrible and selfish and petty of him, he knew that. Mom used to tell them, _"Your brother is not a toy to fight over." _

Mom was dead. Dad was leaving. There would only be Yancy left for both of them, and Raleigh knew he was feeling like he'd been as a little kid, when he and Jazmine had each grabbed one of Yancy's arms and pulled, howling over whose brother he was. Sometimes Yancy and their parents had laughed, other times they were annoyed and frustrated.

That little kid's voice was in the back of his mind, and he knew he shouldn't listen to it. But it wouldn't go away.

_I've lost my mom, and now I'm going to lose my dad, and all I've got left is Yancy._

_So does Jazmine._

_I'm not the oldest, not the youngest, can't I have anything for myself?!_

_She's the only girl, and she's not even legal yet. She needs a guardian. I should be the bigger person._

_We're going to be Jaeger pilots. We've made the second cut. Top six out of thousands._

_We're going to be officers, responsible for other people. How can we be responsible for protecting anyone if we don't do right by our own sister?_

_He's my brother he's my partner he's going to be my co-pilot he's mine he'sminehe'smine!_

"We made the second cut." _How fucking trivial. _"We're drift compatible." _You are a piece of work, Raleigh Becket._

Shame and self-disgust warred with frustration and indignation at her scoff. "I'm very happy for you." _As if. _"Who'd you bribe?" _You are such a bitch, Jazmine._ He could see her sneer in the street light. "I mean, I could see Yance passing the tests, but you? Fat chance."

It was always that way. Jazmine loved to remind him how very, very inferior he was to Yancy, the larger the audience the better. _"It must be the answer to your prayers, a college that specifically wants siblings. The only way you've ever accomplished anything was riding on Yancy's coattails,_" she'd told him when they decided to go to the Academy.

Yancy had pointed out that there wasn't an age limit. Jazmine could apply too, and they might very well accept her. They'd qualified a set of triplets last year who were her age.

Raleigh had smarted, folding in on himself with hurt. Yancy had avoided his eyes, knowing full well that the three of them going to Academy together would _not _be Raleigh's choice. But Jazmine had been in full tantrum mode and yelled that she didn't WANT to go join some military school. _"I could see Dorky over here wanting to clomp around in a glorified Transformer, but you're smarter than that!_"

_"Why do you keep bringing this back to him? For your information, this was my idea!_"

_"Of course it was, he doesn't have any ideas of his own! But now you're going to run off, and where does that leave me?!"_

_"With Mom and Dad, finishing high school, if that's what you want to do! Jesus Christ, I can't stay home forever, Jazz, I'm nineteen and you're sixteen! I've already put off college because of Mom being sick since Dad won't get his act together, but you're old enough now that you shouldn't need me to take care of you!"_

_"But you're still gonna take care of HIM!" _Jazmine had screamed, and ran sobbing out the door.

She'd barely had a civil word for Yancy up to when they left, and Mom had assured them, _"She's just having separation anxiety. She'll come around, and be as proud of you as we are."_

Well, she hadn't. When they'd come home after making the first cut in August, they'd spent most of their time in Mom's hospital room. Jazmine had always left when they started talking about the Academy. Raleigh had seen her hovering around trying to talk to Yancy alone several times, and hovered himself, anxious about what she would say and what sway she'd hold.

At some point, she had managed to pull Yance aside, and Raleigh had gnawed off most of his fingernails sitting with Mom. When they came back, Jazmine was flatly ignoring Yance, and Yance was looking tired and flustered. Raleigh had felt triumphant. After all, he'd told his conscience when he felt guilty, it wasn't like Mom was about to die.

His conscience was a lot louder this time around, and harder to reconcile with what he wanted.

They didn't talk about it an more that night, and when he went to his room to go to sleep, he found that every one of his model planes had at least some part broken, some more subtly than others, and every poster on his wall was torn. He almost went back out to confront her, but Dad and Yancy were still having a hissed, furious conversation in the kitchen. So he just went to bed.

* * *

><p>Yancy stayed in bed until after noon on Saturday and looked like death warmed over when he did come downstairs. Raleigh made him breakfast and didn't make fun of him like he normally would.<p>

Jazmine stayed in her room most of the day. A few times, when Raleigh passed by, he could hear her crying. She'd always been a crier. Sometimes, growing up, Raleigh had just brushed it off, figuring she was being a drama queen. Other times, he hadn't been so sure, especially when the moments where she cried were the same ones that he felt his stomach in knots, his skin itching, and his chest in a vise.

Moments like this one.

Dad was packing. Raleigh kept wanting to ask Yancy. _Is he really leaving? Where? Why? _

Finally, when he caught his father putting another box in his van, he said weakly, "Dad, you don't have to go."

Dad looked at him, sort of cringing as if he were the kid and Raleigh was the parent, and smiled weakly. "You're a good kid, Raleigh. You'll be just fine." He went back to the house as Raleigh stared after him.

Late that night, after they all made sandwiches and stared at them again, going over the funeral arrangements in dull voices, Dad went to his room, and Yancy pulled Raleigh aside. "Listen, Rals, I need to have... a talk with Jazz." Raleigh's heart went to his throat and for a second he was sure he was going to lose it, and then he'd be no better than her. But then Yance muttered, "She's not going to be happy."

Relief swept through him, but his stomach was still churning and his throat was still tight. "We're... going back?" His voice sounded so weak and pathetic. "You haven't changed your mind?"

Yancy shook his head and gave him a shaky smile. It made Raleigh feel pulled in two directions: relief that if Yancy was upset too, then he wasn't wrong to be upset, but also distress because if Yancy couldn't hide how upset he felt, then it was _bad_. "Okay, I'll go... out."

He changed into workout sweats, and went down the street in a random direction. He alternated between walking and jogging and sprinting like a madman, then stretched through every yoga position he knew, then went through all the Jaeger Bushido positions, drill after drill after drill. It was monotonous and painfully dull without Yance and the rest of the class around to have for comparison and the instructors announcing the _katas_. But it developed into a sort of hypnotic rhythm, and that wasn't so bad, because it shut his mind down.

An hour passed, then two. Something made him keep going. Something told him that Yancy's talk with Jazmine was going to last awhile. Something inside him was so relieved, maybe even smug. Something else inside made him hate himself for those feelings.

When he finally made his way back to their street, the lights were all on at the Saunders's house down the block. Diane Saunders was a divorcee who'd been a good friend of Mom's and baby-sat them all when they were younger. Raleigh stopped and backtracked when he saw the silhouettes crossing the street, so they wouldn't see him in the street light.

It was Diane and Jazmine, and in the cold, dark silence, he could hear Jazmine crying. His stomach burned even hotter, and the vise around his chest got even tighter. He stayed in the trees of the empty lot at the end of their cul-de-sac and watched as Jazmine and Diane went back and forth between the houses a few times. Finally, they went back into Diane's house, and Jazmine didn't go home.

Raleigh went back to the house. "Yancy?"

Yancy was still at the table, staring at nothing, looking like he'd aged twenty years. _Oh god, oh god, _his eyes were red-rimmed, and Raleigh wanted to explode across the street and start screaming at them, _how dare they _do that to him?! Or just run back into the woods and sleep there overnight.

But he went hesitantly to his brother's side, and Yancy pulled himself to his feet. "Just... it's okay," he said absently. "It's okay. It's not your fault, Rals. None of it's your fault." He gave Raleigh a quick, rough hug, patting his back, then shuffled up the stairs to his room.

* * *

><p>Diane brought Jazmine to the funeral, keeping an arm around her as if she was Jazmine's mom now - or as if Jazmine wouldn't be able to stay upright on her own. Jazmine looked resigned and seemed to be moving on autopilot. Diane alternated between glaring at Yancy and glaring at Dad, and Raleigh kept wanting to step in front of Yancy and shield him from the stares.<p>

Yancy was calmer today, composed again, politely thanking people for coming, and putting them off when they tried to question him. A few times he smiled reassuringly at Raleigh. Anytime he looked at Jazmine, Jazmine looked away.

As they drove home in their rental car, Yancy told him, "Diane Saunders is going to be Jazmine's guardian. Dad and I are going to a lawyer in the morning; he's signing the house and the stuff over to me. If... Jazmine or - or you don't want it, I thought we could just sell it."

"I don't want it," Raleigh said. What was left in it for him? What was left in it for any of them?

"Then whatever you want to keep of your stuff, we need to put in storage. Diane won't hold it for us."

Raleigh shrugged and almost said, _Might as well toss most of it, Jazz broke just about everything. _But he choked it back down. There wouldn't be much to store, since they'd relocated so many times over the years. A few picture albums, maybe. But even the family ones of their trips... would he ever be able to look at them again? Would Yancy?

That night, Diane came over with a stack of paperwork and absolutely radiating disdain. Yancy was waiting at the table, and she informed them, "Jazmine doesn't want to come. She signed where she needed to."

"Okay," said Yancy cautiously, and motioned Raleigh away as if he were afraid she'd go rabid. "Why don't you - "

"Oh no, you don't," Diane growled. "I haven't yet heard what your brother thinks about this."

"_No_. Leave him out of this," Yancy snarled.

She ignored him and began haughtily, "Raleigh - "

"I _SAID_ - "

"NO!" Raleigh threw up a hand, though Yancy hadn't physically come towards either of them. They both froze. Mind racing, he croaked, "It's fine. It's fine." He was embarrassed. Embarrassed that Yancy thought he should be sent out of the room like a kid. Embarrassed that he felt so scared. He was a Ranger candidate, almost a pilot. He should be able to take this without quaking in his shoes. He straightened his shoulders and looked at Diane. "What?"

Her eyes filled with tears, and she softened her stance. "Raleigh, honey, I am so sorry to put this on you. You're only seventeen, you shouldn't have to in this situation, but I've got no choice. Can you find it in your heart to _begin_ to understand what you and your_ brother_ are about to do?" she pleaded, but the twist of her mouth and the change in her tone made it clear what she thought of said brother.

It took every shred of self-restraint he had not to look at Yancy. But he managed to keep her gaze and stare her down. "We're in the Jaeger Academy," he said quietly. "We're Ranger candidates. She doesn't need us to baby-sit her." _Not even if she thinks she does. We've grown up, she should too, _he thought.

Another voice in the back of his mind whispered, _Keep telling yourself that, jackass._

Diane's breath caught like a sob, but she looked disgusted. "All right then. Since you're such big _men_ now, you can both stand here and watch while I take custody of your sister."

Yancy's jaw was clenched, and there was a vein throbbing on his temple. Raleigh had never seen him like this. Once Diane had signed the papers, she glared at him while he did, and he handed her some of them. Her copies, Raleigh assumed. "My father's signing the house over to me tomorrow. Did she say whether she'd like to keep it?"

"She doesn't. Sell it. There's nothing left in it for her, is there?"

"Fine."

With one final, long stare at each of them, Diane heaved a sigh and walked out. Raleigh stood where he was like he was rooted there. Yancy scrubbed at his face. "I want to... get loose ends wrapped up this week. We'll have to hurry."

"Okay." _It'll be okay, Yance. _He'd never felt such an urge to say that before. It scared and embarrassed him that he wanted to. "He's really going?" he mumbled.

Now Yancy's mouth twisted like Diane's had. "Yeah. I had to... argue with him just to get him to do the formalities before. He didn't say where he's going."

"Did he say why?"

Yancy shook his head, and eyed Raleigh. "Sorry, kiddo. I should've seen some of this coming."

"It's not your fault," Raleigh said, with feeling. But he knew Yancy didn't believe him.

* * *

><p>Yancy got up early the next morning, which was crazy. Dad did show up when he said he would, and Yancy only had one-syllable words for him. He stood leaning against the rental car, glowering, as Dad came up the porch steps to Raleigh. "I'll say goodbye now to you and your sister," he said, as if he was just going on a trip and would be back in a few weeks.<p>

Raleigh stared at him. "You don't have to go," he said.

Dad shook his head. "I can't stay, Raleigh. I'm... I'm sorry." He took a deep breath and looked at him again. "You've grown into a great young man. I'm very proud of you. I love you all."

_I don't understand any of this. _Raleigh shrugged and took a step back. Normally, when Dad went on one of his longer trips and they weren't going with him, they'd have hugged. Quick and awkward, but a hug. Not this time, not like this, when Dad was just... going. _You love us? Really? _"Not enough," he muttered, and looked at Yancy.

Dad trembled, seeming to shrink even more, and went down the porch and across the street. He had to knock for several minutes at Diane's house, then stood on the step talking to her for awhile longer, but she finally let him in. Raleigh half-expected to hear Jazmine start screaming or see something fly out the window, but there was silence, and in only a few moments, Dad came back out.

He looked up at Raleigh on the porch, and then at the house as he stood by the door of his van, then he got in and started it up, and drove down the street ahead of Yancy.

Raleigh knew he'd never see him again. He had a feeling Jazmine and Yancy wouldn't either.

He stood inside the living room for about thirty seconds, then sprinted up the stairs, changed again in a rush, and went tearing down the street like a maniac, running until he was exhausted, then did drills over and over again, slowing down only to stretch and keep from pulling a muscle. He was still at it when he saw Yancy's rental car pass by, and walked back to the house. Yancy was already returning from Diane's when he got there.

"It's done," Yance said shortly. It really was. He cast a searching look over the house much like Dad had done, then asked, "Want to maybe get a hotel room until we go back? I'm not really up for... living here."

"Yeah," Raleigh mumbled. "That'd be great."

They spent the rest of the day throwing their own things out with abandon, emptying the cupboards and fridge, and trying not to actually look at anything too long. Raleigh found the picture albums from their assorted trips and almost, _almost _threw them out. Yancy found him sitting in the master bedroom floor, staring at them.

"Let's... store these somewhere," Raleigh finally said. He thought about suggesting giving them to Jazmine, but he had a feeling she'd burn them. He didn't want that to happen.

Yancy helped Raleigh clean out his room, and noticed that just about everything Raleigh owned - books, keepsakes, and models - had been damaged in some way. His lips thinned like they always did when he knew Jazz (or Raleigh) had done something nasty and was denying it. Raleigh had (almost) never gone after Jazz or her things physically, at least not after age five. That was one of the few instances where Mom and Dad had intervened in their fights, to tell Raleigh that he could not hit Jazmine because (a) she was a girl, and (b) she was younger.

He'd thought that was incredibly unjust, since up until their teens, she had hit plenty hard enough to leave marks, and hadn't thought twice about smashing his stuff or ripping pages out of his books. Hell, up until just a few years ago, she was taller than him! He'd mocked her, though, belittled her for being "the dumb one in the family," made fun of her "stupid girl stuff" and called her a drama queen when she got upset. Especially when it was Yancy's shoulder she tried to cry on.

With nearly everything Raleigh had ever collected in the trash, Yancy tried to throw all his comics and action figures out too. "It's just stuff," he insisted, as he'd always done when Jazmine wrecked something, even though she never touched Yancy's things.

Raleigh stopped him from tossing the ones he knew Yance treasured most. "Keep 'em. Some of them are valuable. Especially this one." He held up Iron Man and grinned. "After all, we're about to be Iron Men on Steroids." It had been a running joke from Day One of the Jaeger Program, and for the first time since they'd been home, Yancy laughed.

* * *

><p>They checked into a motel near the airport and spent the next few days on autopilot. Waking up, doing their drills, going to the house, cleaning and boxing, back to the hotel, drilling again, going to bed. Carting stuff around and throwing it out was a lot of work on top of their drills, but in a way, it was good. It left them both exhausted enough to sleep without having to think too much first. They didn't talk much. Just moving, moving, moving made Raleigh feel numb, and that was all right.<p>

But on the last day where they thought they pretty much had the work done, Yancy was fidgeting and looking towards Diane's house. Raleigh braced himself. "Rals, I... I don't want to go like this." He stared at the boxes around them and the covered furniture. Their family's house now looked like it could just be any empty place up for sale. "Her hating us."

Raleigh stared at his dirty hands. "What do you want to do?"

"... I thought we could go see Mom's grave. Once more, before we go. Ask her if she'll go with us. I... I think Momwouldwantthat," he finished in a rush.

What argument could Raleigh really make against that? "Okay."

On Saturday morning, they drove to the cemetery, and Diane was waiting with Jazmine. Jazmine had been crying, but Raleigh thought maybe she looked a little less like she wanted to gut the two of them. That was good, he told himself. That would make Yance feel better. Maybe they could still feel a little like brothers and sister after all this.

They walked side-by-side to the grave, still covered in flower arrangements from the funeral, and Raleigh found himself humming Mom's favorite Bels song from when they were little. _Is this better, Mom? Are you somewhere better, like heaven? Will this be okay? _

"Will you shut up, Raleigh!" Jazmine snapped at him.

Thus ended those hopeful thoughts. Between them, Yancy shut his eyes. "Jazz, can you not - "

" - Don't call me Jazz. Only my friends call me that."

_Ouch. _She knelt and began mechanically removing some of the flowers that were dead, rearranging the live ones to frame the grave. At least she didn't slap Yancy's hands away when he went to help her, and Raleigh cautiously joined in.

They finished the work in silence, and Yancy said to her, "We need to get back to Jaeger training. Here's the keys to the house, and the realtor knows to talk to Diane. You get the money from the sale." Jazmine stared at the keys in his hand and made no move to take them. "We can... get in touch again when the term is done. Over Christmas."

She took a deep breath, mustering herself like Yancy did, like Mom and Dad had both done when they were about to address something unpleasant. Like Raleigh knew he himself did. She looked at Raleigh, then Yancy, right in the eyes. "Don't. Don't call me. Don't come. Ever again."

Yancy and Raleigh stood rigid, and their sister turned her back on them and walked away. By the time she reached Diane, she was running for the car. Yancy stared at the keys in his hand, then started after her. Diane was waiting, and Raleigh started to follow, but Yancy half turned and said, "No." Raleigh frowned. "Please?"

He just looked so worn down, so Raleigh nodded, and stayed where he was. But he watched. Yancy went to Diane, and she did take the keys, but leaned forward and said something that made Yancy's jaw clench. Once she was walking away and he looked back, Raleigh took that as the go-ahead to rejoin Yancy, and they headed for their car. Diane was standing next to hers with Jazmine already in the passenger seat as they drove away.

Raleigh was sure he felt Jazmine's eyes on them for miles, and wondered why it felt this way.

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming this weekend: _**_The Beckets return to the Academy and face the challenge of full-blown drifting with the demons they both carry. The finalists of Class 2016-B begin combat simulation and get support from their former classmates and the Gage twins in __**Chapter Seven: Go With The **__**Flow**_**.**

**PLEASE remember to review!**

**And a reminder: **With each update, I will also post a preview of the next chapter on my Tumblr: **3Fluffies**. There is a direct link on my bio page if you need it. Feel free to stop by to say hello, discuss the fic, fandoms, cats, or anything!


	7. Go With The Flow

_**A/N:**__ I'm blown away by the feedback on Chapter Six! Thank you all so much for the thoughtful reviews, and please keep them coming! _

_**Canon Note:**__ As far as I know, the names of Eden Assassin's pilots have not been revealed in the canon. As for the emotional and physical struggle involved with drift testing, although we're told that the Beckets were one of the star teams, I have a theory on the difficulty level of this training. In the words of another cinematic brother who tends to drown me in feels, "If it were easy, everyone would do it." (Trivia question: who/what did I quote?)_

**Chapter Seven: Go With The Flow**

_Jaeger Academy, Class 2016-B, Term 3…_

_October, 2016…_

Raleigh was incredibly relieved to get back to the Academy for Term Three, and he had no doubt Yancy felt the same. They rushed through greetings and welcome-backs and the inevitable awkward words of condolence, then threw themselves that much harder into training.

The last time they had one of those conversations was when Tendo and the Gage twins spotted them in the barracks. "Hey, Becket boys!" Tendo called, making them both wince, and the Gages came hurrying around the corner. "Thank god! I was really worried we'd lost you!"

"We are so sorry," one of the twins said, and Raleigh mechanically accepted their handshakes. "You okay?"

"Uh-huh," Yancy was actually stammering, and Raleigh was trying and failing to not look at his feet.

Tendo elevated himself even further in their esteem by correctly interpreting the situation. "So, uh, should I put the word out that you just don't want to talk about it?"

"Thanks," Yancy breathed.

"Done deal, brother. I won't ask again, but anything else I can do?"

Raleigh shrugged, but Yancy actually considered it and smiled wearily. "We just… want to get back to work. Distraction's good."

"Distraction, huh?" Tendo's grin was absolutely wicked. "Hmm, I can probably think of a few things. Be careful what you wish for, though!" He winked, mock-saluted the Gages, then went sauntering off down the hall.

Bruce, Trevin, Yancy, and Raleigh watched him go. "I like him," mused one of the twins. "He should have a sign above his head : 'I solemnly swear I am up to no good.'" Raleigh and Yancy had to laugh.

* * *

><p>There was a whole new slew of tech and schematics to learn, more and more complicated physical drills, more and more involved (and invasive) psychoanalysis. The last part caused them more discomfort than anything.<p>

"You're about to have your brother in your head," Raleigh's personal headshrinker told him. "Nothing stays secret in the drift, and the more you want something to be secret, the more quickly it comes out. That's simply a fact."

She was nice enough, but still a stranger and an officer who would be reporting on him, and he did _not_ like airing the gory details of what was inside his head to her. It was a little reassuring when she told him that every single other Ranger candidate had gone through this, and "the first few sessions are always as fun as pulling teeth." But not that reassuring. He hated it. Yancy did too.

The Gage twins came and went amid helping with establishing the new Shatterdome in Anchorage and their own ongoing training and practice and tests. "Be warned: it never ends," Bruce groaned at their class one day as they said hi in the hallway. "Not the testing, not the analysis, not the drills. Our fault for picking a new field - it's always developing." He had electrode spots all over his face.

Raleigh and Yancy had finally figured out a reliable way to tell which one was which: Bruce had a scar on his chin and Trevin didn't.

"Who gets to ask how he got that?" Brian Patrick asked slyly.

"Mom did it so she could tell them apart," Tendo guessed, getting gasps of outrage and lots of stifled laughter.

It was great having so many of their classmates still around on a regular basis. More than half of Class 2016-B's eliminated candidates were getting assessed and trained for other officer placements. Most of the candidates with engineering and tactical background got snapped up by J-Tech Engineering to work in the Proving Grounds. Some, like Lea Franklin, were handed offers for additional education on the PPDC's dime.

The whole Academy turned out to watch the dedication of Eden Assassin, the last Mark II, before she moved to the new Russian Shatterdome. "They want her there for the grand opening next month. She'll be Cherno Alpha's new roommate," the Gages told them.

A tradition had spawned with the roll-out of the Mark IIs that along with the old maritime traditions of naming the mech, another Jaeger broke a champagne bottle on it. Brawler Yukon, now decommissioned and residing full-time at the proving grounds as the "training mech," had the honor in Anchorage.

"If any of the Mark IIIs get named Titanic, I'm outta here," the irrepressible Tendo muttered in Raleigh and Yancy's ears as Vladimir Putin dedicated Eden Assassin.

They only got brief introductions to Eden's new Rangers, a pair of Estonian Air Force pilots who, interestingly, had never met before K-Day. But they'd been part of Estonia's contribution of minds and manpower first to the UN, then the PPDC, and obviously, they had forged one hell of a bond.

"Funny that we ended up with people from about as far from the Breach as you can get," Yancy mused.

"The Pacific may be the focal point now, but if the kaiju start spreading, or even one makes it into the Arctic Ocean or below South America..." Chloe Warner shook her head. "After K-Day, I was in Savannah at the beach, just... imagining one of 'em. Damn, sorry, baby," she patted Lea, who was starting to go pale. Tendo was also losing his usual humor along with the others who'd had front-row seats.

"Back to subject," said Yancy quickly. "The heroes of the hour." He gestured subtly to the two pilots, posing for photo after photo with Putin, with President Obama, and all the other dignitaries in front of Eden Assassin. "Hedy Keres sure is a looker."

There were sly noises of agreement from the guys and a couple of the girls, appreciating the female pilot for more than her skills. "Peter Lepp ain't bad either," added Cady. "Scuttlebutt is that they're an item." The two pilots had their arms around each other's waists. It could've just been camaraderie - lots of the Ranger pairs were very close, Raleigh knew - but it might not have been.

"Well, drifting is pretty intimate. Dr. Lightcap only met Lieutenant D'onofrio in the testing, and they're married now," observed Tendo.

Cady made a face. "That's a little weird if you think about it. Half the Rangers are siblings or cousins, and the other half are either married or wind up sleeping together. If drifting makes you horny - "

"Oh _God!_" Devi Hassan hissed as her sister gave Cady a furious shove. "Do _not _go there!"

"If all eight of us run screaming out of here, we'll tell Marshall who to blame," Brian growled, avoiding his cousin's eyes. Raleigh would have chimed in, but he was too busy trying not to gag - and not to think about the warnings the Gage twins had given.

* * *

><p>He felt slow the next day when the Gages gave them a tour of the full-input simulator. There was a bucket on the floor next to each rig. "What're those for?"<p>

Bruce and Trevin exchanged smirks. "You're a smart guy, Raleigh, you'll figure it out."

Prepping for the first round involved a lot of rehashing those warnings - don't panic, don't judge, don't recoil, just let it flow by - and reassurances that as long as they were open-minded and stayed calm, it would get easier. Raleigh wondered if this was the point where it would all fall apart; he and Yancy could barely look each other in the eye already, and they hadn't even made their first attempt yet!

His consolation came from his fellow finalists; Devi and Susanti were as anxious and embarrassed as he and Yancy, and Brian and Janet weren't much better. Kennedy and Steffie were a little calmer, since they didn't have the familial issues to deal with, but although they'd been friends since kindergarten, they knew this was going to be a whole new ball game.

The night before their first full drift, Raleigh and Yancy made a mutual, silent decision to go distract themselves separately. Raleigh hung out with Tendo and Cady, examining the training materials they'd been given on Local Command Center operations, and Yancy went off to the Kwoon to work out. Lea timidly followed him.

"She still keeping up the physical stuff?" Raleigh asked when he saw them sparring.

"Yep. She hasn't decided whether to take Schoenfeld up on his offer. Intensive work-study programs for engineering, robotics. She could have a PhD by the time she's twenty-one, but I think maybe she wants to stay with the class. She got into shape after K-Day because she was gonna join the army," said Cady, ever the information man.

"Hey, I don't blame her. I did the same thing," said Tendo, shaking his head. He gave Raleigh a sly smile. "I think she's also a little taken with your big bro, my man."

Raleigh sat back, startled. "What? She's a kid!"

"Dude, she's only six months younger than you!" he laughed.

As Raleigh ran his mind through the interactions he'd seen between Lea and his brother, he was... a little less amused than the others. He was pretty sure Yancy didn't think of her that way; she wasn't bad-looking, and maybe not really that young, but she seemed a lot younger. Yancy liked his girls a little more sure of themselves, although he was an unfailing gentleman with everyone. Lea wouldn't be the first girl who took it the wrong way when he was complimentary. But Yancy treated her, well, kind of like he did Jazmine when they'd gotten along.

Man, did that thought give Raleigh a pang. He hurriedly changed the subject back to Tendo and Cady's career plans.

* * *

><p>The following day was both easier and harder than Raleigh and Yancy expected it to be. Raleigh's palms were sweating as they were into the pons caps and mock-up circuitry suits, and he felt like Dr. Lightcap was only talking to him when she kept repeating, "This is perfectly normal."<p>

As the techs exited the simulator, Yancy asked, "Nervous?"

"Yeah," Raleigh admitted. "You?"

Yancy paused, then chuckled. "Y'know, I was about to deny it. No point, I guess. Ready to step into my head, kid?"

Raleigh grinned weakly as Dr. Lightcap said over the comm, "Initiating neural handshake in five ... four ... three ... two ... one..."

Reality dissolved. Light, weight, touch, sound evaporated and condensed and they were floating. Drifting.

_It's okay, it'll be okay, just breathe - _

_Holy shit! Where are we?_

_Focus - focus, be strong, be strong for Rals - _

_Christ, this is weird._

_Hanbōs clack-clack-clacked together in the Kwoon._

_This isn't so bad._

_"Again. This time, Yancy Becket, attack. Raleigh Becket, defend."_

_"Yessir!"_

_Four hits to three, Yance may be better but I can hold my own - _

"Yancy? Raleigh? Focus for me! Focus on my voice!"

The Academy conn-pod sim room. Raleigh gasped as the present and reality re-formed, and heard Yancy coughing. He also _felt _Yancy coughing. He blinked repeatedly to get his blurry vision to focus on the glass where a Jaeger's view ports would be, and the techs and analysts and scientists on the other side. Dr. Lightcap was leaning against the monitors, her hand on the mic.

"Good, that's better. What you're experiencing is a full shared headspace. Focus on me, focus on my voice."

Her voice sounded funny, like an echo - but a simultaneous echo, so how could it be an echo in the first place? He was hearing it through his own and Yancy's ears, seeing double because he was seeing through his own and Yancy's eyes.

On the edges of their vision were floating things, like reflections in disturbed water… faces, places he knew, Yancy knew… it was hard to remember to look at Dr. Lightcap and not keep staring at them, trying to follow what they were or where they were going or where they'd come from…

_Dammit, focus, dumbass!_

"Uh?" he looked drunkenly to his right.

Yancy blinked, then realized Raleigh thought he'd been thinking _at_ him. "Sorry, talking to myself." He grinned weakly. "We good?"

_Wegoodwegoodwegood? _

_We're okaywe'reokay... _"Yeah. We're okay."

Dr. Lightcap grinned at them. "Let's start the cognitive tests. They're just like the ones you've done before at screening, but now you have to solve them together in the drift. You're doing great, Rangers."

_Rangers… "We're not going to college, we're joining the Rangers."_

They raised their arms to the holographic puzzles in front of them, feeling like their limbs were immersed in wet cement. Tests and puzzles that had been absurdly simple at screening were now insanely hard and complicated. They fumbled along and got through the first one. The second one was harder to even understand, though Raleigh knew they had both done it during screening.

_We can do this, Rals. We can do this._

There were voices on the edges of their awareness too, as if their minds were spreading out into the ocean, and anywhere they looked, everything they heard was a memory that spun them around and around in the current.

_"You shouldn't need me to take care of you!" Yancy, frustrated and stressed, trying so hard not to shout at Jazmine._

_"You're still gonna take care of HIM!" _

_Frustrationguiltshameangerfearguiltdoubtshamedoubt…_

"Yancy, stay with me, you're going out of alignment!"

_Jazmine's retreating back, out the front door when they were working on their applications. It was late spring but still snowing..._

_… __It was early fall, and the grass of the cemetery grounds was brown and dry. Jazmine's retreating back, away from Mom's grave. Diane Saunders and her accusing eyes right in front of Yancy's face. _

_What have I done? Oh god, what have I done? Why are you looking at me like that? Am I a monster? Selfish, selfish like Mom, puffing away on her cancer sticks until she died and left me to take care of them, selfish like Dad running out on us the minute we've got her in the ground..._

"Raleigh, Yancy, don't follow the memories. Rangers, can you hear me? Okay, we've got them both out of alignment. They're chasing the rabbit."

"What else is new? It's their first try."

_Raleigh was starting to follow, and Yancy turned back desperately. "No. Please?" _

_Please, Rals, just let me deal with it. It's my fault, I should be the one who handles it. It was my responsibility, and I just dropped it. Mom abandoned us Dad abandoned us and now I've abandoned her - But we're joining the Rangers. We're drift compatible, we made the second cut - we never thought we would get this far! We could be Jaeger pilots, protecting the whole coastline! Doesn't that mean something? Isn't that more important?_

_"Here are the house keys." He handed them to Diane and fought to keep a straight face. Don't look at me like that don't look at me like that - _

_She leaned in, and he braced himself. "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it, Mr. Becket?" _

It was like a television screen suddenly exploded into electric snow and static - only they were floating in it, and somewhere in this shared, otherworldly space, Raleigh thought he heard something like a howl of anguish. His legs gave way in the rig - No, Yancy's did.

"Hang on, guys, we're releasing the handshake. Three...two...one... Disengaged."

And Raleigh was back in his own head and his own body. He turned to see Yancy slide out of the rig and start throwing up. Oh, so that's what the bucket was for. The Gages had said this would be hard.

Raleigh's whole body was shaking, and he wasn't sure he wouldn't be needing his own bucket yet. He slumped in the rig in a daze as the techs and a couple of medics came in and started moving around him, but he couldn't quite focus on them.

"You're okay, Rangers, you're okay. I know it was rough, it always is."

"Breathe for me, Yancy, just breathe."

They let themselves get poked and prodded, and finally staggered out into the debriefing room. Dr. Lightcap came in, examining a tablet with all the readings she'd taken, and Raleigh managed to spare a few thoughts to wonder just how badly they had fucked it up.

To his surprise, she smiled. "That was actually very impressive." Raleigh blinked, and managed to look at Yance, finding his brother no less astonished than he was. "Well, it was. For two completely inexperienced candidates? That was quite a long first drift. Most don't even manage to start testing before we have to cut the connection. You finished a puzzle. Good work."

For once, Yancy looked as stupefied as Raleigh felt. They stared at Lightcap, then at each other. Yancy made a choked noise in his throat - and started to laugh. Raleigh found himself grinning helplessly.

"So we don't get scrubbed out if we have to use the bucket?"

"I would be more worried if you didn't have to use it," Lightcap replied. She glanced at the clock. "Report back tomorrow for the next round. Same bat time, same bat channel." Now Raleigh laughed wearily. No wonder she liked Yancy so much.

They passed Kennedy and Stephanie on their way into the labs for their round. Both girls blanched at the sight of them. "Oh God. Is it that bad?"

Raleigh wasn't sure how to answer that. _Yes and no?_

"When you're in there, it's... pretty freaky," Yancy admitted. "But everyone says it's normal to freak the first time. Focus on the tests."

"Thanks, Yance."

They showered and found they'd been given a very long free period before lunch. Raleigh had a feeling he knew what the schedulers were expecting here. So they sat on the floor of their room and stared at their feet.

"I didn't want you to know about that," Yancy muttered.

Raleigh rubbed his eyes. "No point in not wanting me to know anything anymore, is there?" He made himself look at his brother. "You... you don't need to protect me. Not here. If we're gonna be Rangers, we've both got to be grown-ups."

"Yeah, I know." Yancy didn't sound terribly happy about it.

"Diane's full of shit," Raleigh said. Yancy flinched, and he had that look like Raleigh had seen the night before the funeral in the kitchen: beaten down. "You're nothing like Dad."

Yancy squeezed his eyes shut, and tears slid down, and that was horrible.

_No, Yance, no, don't be like this! You're nothing like him! Dad was the one who was supposed to stay, he was the one responsible for Jazz, not you! He's the one who dicked off and left us in the lurch, not you! _

Breathing heavily, Yancy got himself back under control and got up to wipe his face. "If we keep going... you're gonna see things, hear them in my head. Sometimes I'm a heartless bastard."

Raleigh scoffed. "Like I'm ever gonna get nominated for sainthood. You're still the best brother ever."

Well, that backfired. It was just a spur-of-the-moment, empty, childish praise, but Yancy stared at him like he'd said something outlandish. Then his face just broke all over again, and he _sobbed!_

_Yancy, I'm sorry, shit, I'm sorry, don't cry, please! _

Even as Raleigh scrambled to his feet, trying to babble out an apology, he was suddenly enveloped in the hardest, most fierce bear hug he'd gotten... possibly ever. He was shocked for a couple of seconds, but then he was returning it, hugging Yancy as hard as he could until it felt like both of their ribcages were going to cave in and they were still holding on.

It was like the anti-drift, everything solid and anchored and tactile and real. Rooting them back in the ground, on solid earth, and they could walk again. It was perfect.

Finally, he had to croak out, "Yance, I can't breathe!"

Letting go, Yancy grinned at him and pinched his cheek, making him growl. "You're not such a bad specimen of brotherhood yourself, kid. You think maybe we can do this?"

"Yeah." Raleigh didn't have to think about it. "We can do this."

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon: **__Simulator training intensifies, and one of the four teams is cut. The finalists are introduced to another pair of newly-minted Rangers, and endure the scrutiny and constant ribbing of their peers as the betting also intensifies on the outcome of Class 2016-B. Odds are laid and bets are made and things lighten up in __**Chapter Eight: I Got The Horse Right **__**Here!**_

**PLEASE remember to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Devi and Susanti Hassan - First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24. One of four teams (including the Beckets) to survive the second cut.

Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald - First cousins, Irish nationals, mid-20s. Their parents were NATO aid workers who went to San Francisco after K-Day. Brian's father and Janet's mother both died of exposure to Kaiju Blue toxin, leading the cousins to enlist in the PPDC. One of four teams (including the Beckets) to survive the second cut.

Cady Spencer - mid-20s, Filipino-American from Portland, Oregon. His mother's family is from Manila, and she lost all contact with them after Hundun attacked in 2014. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Lea Franklin - age 17, lived in San Jose, California. Sole survivor of K-Day out of her family because she was traveling abroad with a school group. Has intense social anxiety due to PTSD, but trained for military service to avenge her family. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Christian and Chloe Warner - African-Americans from Atlanta, Georgia, ages 25 and 23, half-siblings from a blended family. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Antwan Ferrier - Jamaican national, age 38, was a cruise ship steward in Cabo San Lucas when Kaiceph attacked. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Peter Lepp and Hedy Keres - pilots of Eden Assassin, Russia's Mark II Jaeger, which launches in late October 2016. Estonian air force pilots who met after K-Day, graduated class 2016-A of the Jaeger Academy.

**Familiar Faces**

Kennedy LaRue and Stephanie Lanphier - childhood friends from Seattle, age 18, high school athletes and cheerleaders who opted to try the Jaeger Academy after their college plans were derailed by the war. (If you don't know more than that, well, wait and see!) One of four teams (along with the Beckets) to survive the second cut.

Dr. Caitlin Lightcap - age 30ish, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, inventor of the pons neural bridge and co-pilot of Brawler Yukon, the first Jaeger, until its destruction.


	8. I Got The Horse Right Here

_**A/N**__: Many thanks to everyone for the wonderful reviews! Please keep 'em coming! The quote from my author's note last chapter was Loki in Thor: The Dark World. Loki and Thor are the other pair of fictional brothers who tend to drown me in the feels! This chapter is meant to lighten things up a bit before we plunge back into the angst. Hope you like!_

**Chapter Eight: I Got The Horse Right Here**

_Jaeger Academy, Class 2016-B, Term 3…_

_November 2016…_

Yancy's twenty-first birthday came and went quietly. Raleigh wanted to blow off drills and studying for one night and go out, but Yancy refused. "Not at this stage, it's too important. Don't worry about it, Rals. Eighteen's a bigger milestone than twenty-one. It's not like I never drank before now, and I wouldn't be up for doing shots anyway. We can celebrate when the term's over."

Raleigh put the word out anyway, and there were honest-to-god cupcakes available in the mess hall that night, including one with a candle for Yance. Amazon delivery wasn't very reliable to the Academy, so the plushy mini-Hulk that Raleigh ordered arrived a day late. It wasn't much, but it could get smashed into the bottom of a standard-issue duffel without a problem, and it made Yancy laugh. Raleigh had a feeling that part of Yancy's reason for not wanting to celebrate was that he was still too low after Mom's death and the mess with Jazmine.

"Only thing I really want is for us to not completely suck at the simulator," Yance insisted.

"That'd be a present for both of us," Raleigh agreed.

They got it. By the middle of week two, they were cleared for a full drift combat simulation. "Dude!" exclaimed Bruce Gage. "That has to be a record!"

"Close to it," said Dr. Lightcap. The other three pairs from their class were still struggling through the cognitive drift sims, though Devi and Suze were close to finishing, and Kennedy and Steph were making progress.

"Man, if you don't at least get killed on the first drop, I'm going to have serious inadequacy issues," Trevin mock-grumbled.

They did get killed, but they managed to get through all the pre-combat drills in full drift without crashing their virtual Jaeger. Combat sims were confusing and chaotic, and they had to deal with a lot of rabbit-chasing at first.

"What was it Marshall said in his opening address? 'Like solving a Rubik's cube in the middle of a boxing match?' I couldn't even see the other boxer!" Raleigh fumed as they unwound after an especially bad round. The headspace got easier to understand and navigate, at least until a new variable was thrown in. Then it was like starting from scratch, and so damn frustrating!

The Psychs bluntly pointed out to both of them that they had a particular stumbling block to deal with, coming away from the death of a parent and estrangement from the rest of their family so recently. It was awkward as hell to talk about it or hear someone else talk about it, but at least the Psychs were candid with them.

_Just refocus. Don't judge. We're human. We can't always help what we feel or what we think, or what we imagine. _

The Gage twins had been very accurate in warning about the weirdness of the human imagination. Both Raleigh and Yancy wound up needing the buckets again the first (several) times that happened, gagging and mortified and babbling apologies.

Raleigh felt naked in the headspace. It wasn't like he hadn't been bare-assed in front of his brother multiple times before, but the drift was a level of exposure that went far deeper than skin. Early on, a part of him was always screaming to stop, to recoil and hide himself and turn away, because nobody, not even Yancy, should be seeing so deep into his soul.

Then he'd refocus, rethink, and walk back in.

And it did get easier.

This was his brother. He could trust his brother. His brother could trust him. Yancy didn't hate him for wanting to be chosen over Jazmine. Raleigh didn't hate Yancy for resenting both of their parents, even Mom. They weren't saints. They'd both done bad things, unkind things. Raleigh wasn't evil for being glad that Yancy had chosen to stay with him at the Academy rather than finish raising Jazmine. Yancy wasn't a monster for having sometimes been gratified that Raleigh and Jazmine had fought over him.

_We're drift compatible. We can do this. We can fight kaiju and save the world. _

Neither of them were perverts for the physical impulses or the mental ones, and sometimes in the drift one would latch on and attach itself to the other occupant of the headspace and - _oh shit, no, that's bad, that's wrong, sorrysorrysorry not supposed to ever think that way - _and one or both of them would end up puking.

_Just let it go, just let it go, it isn't real, refocus, refocus, stay in the drift and it'll just float by. _

On their third sim drop, they had their first non-kamikaze kill. They came whooping and bellowing out of the sim pod, high-fiving, hugging and chest-bumping and acting like a couple of deranged frat boys while the techs and Dr. Lightcap applauded and laughed. Then they all had to collect themselves in a hurry when Marshall Pentecost came around the corner.

* * *

><p>In week three, Kennedy and Stephanie as well as the Hassan sisters had also made it into full combat sims, and the six of them had group classes analyzing their performances and techniques. Watching just the raw pons and instrument readouts was boring - and often incomprehensible. Watching the sim replays was more fun, though all of them would get frustrated, imagining how they would handle the scenario differently.<p>

At one point during a drop against Virtual Onibaba, the pons readout indicated Steph was drifting off, and Kennedy yelled "PINK ELEPHANT!"

Raleigh and Yancy stared at the Hassans in confusion. Dr. Lightcap smothered a laugh, and all the techs were grinning into their instruments, but they refused to explain what it was about. However, Stephanie did come back into alignment in time to salvage the fight, and they scored a kill.

It was Yancy who figured it out afterward. "Are you two seriously using a _safeword_?!"

"Oh, _thanks_, Becket, thanks so very much!" Devi Hassan exclaimed, burying her face in her hands. "Now we take our turn with that image in our heads!"

Yance turned beet red and mumbled, "Sorry," as the Hassan sisters groaned, Kennedy and Stephanie giggled, and Raleigh couldn't decide whether to laugh or vomit again.

"How have you not figured out how to erase things yet, Doc?" he muttered to Lightcap. "Can't someone invent some brain-bleach?"

She chuckled and punched him lightly in the shoulder. "Don't tempt me, kiddo. There are days."

At the end of week three, Brian and Janet were out of the running. They took it as well as the others had: disappointed, sad, but determined to be adults about it and stay in the war effort. The six remaining contenders cut studying short for an evening so they could get together with everyone who was available for a commiseration pow-wow.

"Will you stay or shift to another department?" asked Raleigh.

"We hadn't decided yet. We were trying not to think that way yet, hoping we could get it together in the drift, but..." Janet shrugged helplessly. "I suppose it wasn't to be."

"Hey." Tendo waved a fingertip over his head, indicating the whole population of the room. "Been there, done that. Like we said to all the rest: be proud. You made the second cut, top ten, and if the eight of you walking around like zombies for the past month is any indication, it's no picnic."

"You have no idea," Suze Hassan muttered. "We face-planted Virtual Romeo in front of the Gages today."

"Ooh, girlfriends, you are _done_!" Tendo warned, as the others hooted. "They're gonna have you whacked for sure."

Bruce and Trevin were back while Romeo was getting new reactor shielding installed, and were often coming in and out of the simulator before and after the trainees. It was intimidating as hell when they hung around to watch - and whenever the virtual Jaeger being run was their own, they never failed to make comments.

Raleigh and Yancy barely managed not to get themselves killed in Virtual Romeo while the Gages were watching, but it was one of their more clumsy victories.

The twins knew it, and made no bones about giving them hell. "What the hell was that hoppity-skip thing you were doing?! Trying to make our Jaeger do pirouettes or something, Becket?!"

Raleigh and Yancy were mortified to find that Captain D'onofrio was there as well, but Dr. Lightcap's husband came to the rescue. "Like one of YouTube's top clips of all time isn't you two making your Jaeger do the Macarena. You do not have room to talk, Mr. Gage!"

* * *

><p>"Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, place your bets on Class 2016-B!" Along with training for a strike trooper position, Antwan Ferrier had appointed himself to the role of Bookie In Chief. Whenever the stuffier superior officers (translation: Pentecost) weren't around, Antwan was parading around the Mess Hall during breaks announcing the odds.<p>

The three remaining candidate teams attended meals together as an unspoken rule, so that they could at least try and spread the embarrassment around.

"Supporting our comrades-in-arms and all that," mumbled Stephanie as she and Kennedy returned from the simulator one evening.

"Bad?" Raleigh asked sympathetically.

"Ugh. We melted down Cherno Alpha." But the girls squared their shoulders and marched between the Beckets and the Hassans into the mess hall to endure the ribbing.

Antwan was in the center of a crowd of personnel, including a group in jumpsuits that weren't Romeo Blue's. "Oh, hey, there's our newbies!" Bruce and Trevin waved them towards another pair in pilot jackets. "Vic and Gunnar Tunnari, heirs apparent to Coyote Tango."

"Congratulations!" exclaimed Kennedy, shaking their hands. She and Steph were all enthusiasm to get the topic of discussion off the odds, but as luck would have it, the Tunnaris were betting men.

"So this class is down to a three-fer also, huh? Same as 2016-A," said Vic, the older brother. His wicked smirk was all the warning the candidates needed. "So where are the odds?"

Cackles rang out and Steph and Kennedy face-palmed, and the Beckets and Hassans braced themselves. "Well, Team LaLa's dropped a bit after that wipeout," Tendo announced. "Five-to-one."

"Excuse me?! Team WHAT?!" Stephanie forgot all about her embarrassment at their sim performance.

Whoops of laughter erupted. "Your fault for having different last names," said Bruce Gage. "Every team gets a nickname around here."

Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald exchanged bemused glances. "Dare I ask what ours was?"

"Team Irish," said Antwan, and the cousins groaned in unison.

"So why can't we be Team America?!" Kennedy protested.

"Because there's two of us," Raleigh replied, getting an elbow in the ribs from his brother (though Yancy was close to cracking up too). "Well, it wouldn't be fair!"

"Says the left half of Team Twinkletoes," announced Trevin Gage. Raleigh choked, and now the hoots were directed at the Beckets. "Well, have you seen their sims?"

Yancy sputtered and finally blurted, "Aw, come on, we haven't croaked since our second drop!"

The Tunaris jumped right in. "So you're two-to-one odds, but I've seen your runs. Even in the big tanks, you guys are seriously mincy when it comes to planting your feet. You're worse than Pete and Hedy were – 2016-A, they were Team Klutz," Gunnar added to the gleeful onlookers.

Devi Hassan rolled her eyes and threw an arm around the still-appalled Stephanie. "Well, they still graduated and got a Jaeger, so that's a good sign." She grinned at her sister, and Susanti squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation. "So what are you calling us?"

"If you say Team Kangaroo, I will end all of you," Suze informed them… and everyone hesitated just a bit too long. "ARGH!" She pointed accusingly at Raleigh and Yancy. "If anyone gets that, it should be them – they're the ones who keep bouncing!"

_Oh, fine, I see how it is!_ Apparently it was every team for themselves when it came to assigning nicknames, so Raleigh retorted, "Then that makes you Team Wrecking Ball."

"Oooh!"

Yancy face-palmed, but didn't rush to Devi and Susanti's defense. The Hassans did have a habit of going through obstacles instead of around them, though it certainly had the element of surprise. Luckily, Antwan and Tendo seized control back before the naming war erupted into violence. "Okay, okay, shut up so we can finish! Odds are two-to-one on the Beckets to win!"

"Who places and who shows?" snickered Christian Warner. But he studied his betting slip and announced, "I'm keeping my dough where it was."

"So that means we scratched," said Janet, but she kept her good humor and handed some bills to Antwan. "I'm still betting on you," she informed Stephanie and Kennedy.

"Thanks, Cinna. Just call us Team Mockingjay."

"There you go! Chins up; lots of candidates get dead in the Virtual Mark I drops. Those mechs are beasts," said Vic Tunari. Studying the stats sheets with mock-seriousness, he finally declared, "Damn, you Beckets may be bouncy, but you got some moves. Fifty on Team Testosterone!"

"Uh-oh, it's Battle of the Sexes now!" said Cady.

"Shit, that's never happened before!" Bruce and Trevin dove for the stats sheets as everyone started talking again. They were right. Up until now, every class had had a couple of male/female teams, so the Battle of the Sexes had never come up. 2016-B would now be the first with all single-gender teams.

"No fair, Team Estrogen has two shots!" protested several of the guys, exchanging frantic looks with the Beckets.

Yancy groaned. "As if we needed any more pressure."

"Suck it up, Twinkletoes," Chloe Warner said cheerfully. "Divide mine up for Team Estrogen: twenty-five on the Hassans, twenty-five on the cheerleaders."

But that got Kennedy and Steffie's hackles back up. "Hey, why do we get all the cheesy nicknames?!"

"Since when is 'Twinkletoes' not cheesy?" Raleigh tried to peek at the stats sheets, only to have the Gages pull them away. "Aw, come on, why can't we see what you're looking at?"

"They're afraid we'll pull a White Sox," said Yancy. "We're not allowed to bet either. 'May the odds be ever in'… _our_ favor." Groans rang out, and he grinned. "So what happens if everybody graduates?"

"Win-place-show is still a thing. Who gets the first, second, and third Jaeger assignment," Antwan explained.

"I get you," said Cady. "Did anybody get the trifecta last year?"

"Nobody did," said Trevin. He pointed at the Tunaris. "These two were the big upset. Nobody expected Coyote Tango to get reassigned; we were all betting on them getting an American Mark III next year."

The Tunaris winked in unison at the Beckets. "So now that one's still up for grabs." Gunnar shot a grin at the Hassans. "And the Aussies are bitching because they didn't get a Mark II, so they'll probably get at least one Mark III."

"That's comforting," said Indra. "I'm keeping my loyalty and my money on my cousins, even if Team America has two shots as well: the boys and the cheerleaders." He laughed as said cheerleaders huffed again.

"As if that was the only sport we competed at in high school," Kennedy fumed. "We were first in the state on the swim team!"

"Yeah?" Chloe perked up. "Then wait'll you do an underwater sim. That tends to kill all the candidates." She gave Raleigh and Yancy a wicked grin, her loyalty flag firmly planted with her gender. "Your odds are about to go down, snowmen!"

But Tendo just couldn't resist. "So we could call Team Lala the swimmers if you like that better. Though…" He feigned thoughtfulness. "You're kinda small. So that makes you the Lil' Swimmers."

Dead silence. Soft, strangled noises began to rise as people started to lose it, and Kennedy and Stephanie exchanged a long look. "Oh, _man. _Start running," Antwan murmured, pulling the betting slips away from Tendo. "Start running now!"

"… You are dead, Choi." The cheerleaders advanced, and Tendo scrambled out of his chair and started backing up. The onlookers parted to make way for the girls on the warpath. "Seriously. Dead."

Tendo let out a high-pitched and very girly shriek of terror and bolted, with Team Lala hot on his heels as the mess hall erupted into howls of laughter and roars of encouragement. (Most of the women were bellowing approval for Kennedy and Steph to inflict various painful punishments, while most of the men were shouting for Tendo to run faster.)

* * *

><p>"What'd you do when you caught him?" Yancy laughed as the candidates gathered for after-dinner studying.<p>

"You _did _catch him, I hope," added Devi Hassan.

"Hell, yeah!" Kennedy replied smugly. "We tackled his big mouth on the running path outside and rubbed slush into his hair."

The Hassans applauded, while the Beckets duly protested the mistreatment of their dudebro. "Girrrl, you messed up _Tendo's_ hair?!" Raleigh exclaimed in mock-horror. "That's just not right!"

"He asked for it!" But behind the bravado, Yancy sensed Kennedy and Steph were uneasy, and from the way she was watching them, Devi could see it too.

"None of us are in danger of scratching, if that's what's worrying you," the elder Hassan sister told the younger girls. "Captain D'onofrio says nobody's ever come out of training with a perfect record. So far we're all on track to make Ranger Ready."

The cheerleaders – oops, Yancy would have to watch out for calling them that out loud – exchanged a look. "It's not… exactly the simulator we're having problems with," Kennedy admitted, dropping her eyes. "It's the Psychs."

_Ooh. Ouch._ The headshrinkers were bad enough for Yancy and Raleigh to deal with, constantly poring over the neural data and wanting to rehash their emotions and triggers about Mom and Dad and Jazmine and anything and everything else that made their concentration slip for even one second in the drift.

The Psych Analysts had the power to ground a team for instability; they were all _very _aware of that. It was, in its own way, even more intimidating than the Tacticians and the Fightmasters breathing down their necks.

What issue the Psychs were having with Kennedy and Steph, he couldn't guess from watching their runs. Maybe it took a woman's empathy to read it, because Devi did. "Battle stress?"

Kennedy nodded. Raleigh shot Yancy an uncomfortable look, but Suze patted the other two girls. "They've got on our case about it too. It's not just you. We've all got things we have trouble with."

For unity's sake, Yancy pondered the criticism he and Raleigh got most often. "They keep getting on us for being reckless, not thinking stuff through. I swear they get points for picking us all apart." He smiled at them. "So whatever the bookies say, we're not a sure thing."

The younger girls did cheer up and grinned at them. "Yeah, you two are down to three-to-one." Raleigh feigned outrage, and they all laughed.

Team Testosterone's odds dropped yet again on their next sim run. The difficulty level of underwater sims had not been exaggerated, and while all three crews survived, Steffie and Kennedy did come out with the high score. And, as luck would have it, the Gages were watching when Yancy and Raleigh emerged. "You guys do know you can't drown a kaiju, right?"

To Raleigh and Yancy's intense relief, Captain D'onofrio was there as well, and retorted, "Ignore them; they've gotten Romeo stuck in the mud more times than I can count."

There seemed to be a mostly-playful snark war going on between the Gages and the D'onofrios, which luckily derailed Bruce and Trevin's harassment of the candidates for their poorer sim runs – most of the time.

Tendo and Cady got the scoop on it. "Bruce and Trev are a bit full of it. Captain and Doc are tetchy because they refer to Brawler Yukon as 'the Clunker.'"

"Aww, that's mean!" protested Antwan.

Chloe tsk'd and shook her head. "Didn't their momma teach 'em to respect their elders? Brawler's the granddaddy, father of a nation. I'm with Cap and Doc; I don't care if it's decommissioned, nobody disses His Majesty."

"Hear hear," Lea surprised them all by saying with a thump on the table.

Raleigh surreptitiously watched her from the corner of his eye. As always, she didn't talk a lot, but she was certainly smiling more than she had when they'd all first met. And a lot of her smiles were directed at Yancy. Yance was friendly with her, gentle when she was in one of her skittish moods, but he didn't seem to be flirting. Even so, it gave Raleigh a twinge, and he found himself being a little more vocal then necessary, encouraging Lea to take the offer from R&D. If Yancy saw that in the drift and recognized his reasons, he never said.

It turned out that the drift sometimes showed too much of some things and not enough of others. In the middle of week four, they hit their personal best in the simulator and went out to the nearest bar to the Academy for an actual drink.

"Nobody checks IDs at that place, so as long as you don't get drunk, you're good," Trevin and Gage told them. "Just watch out for the Jaeger Flies. That place swarms with 'em."

That was a warning that could've been a little louder.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon: **__The Naomi Incident, from the POV of the Gages, Tendo Choi, and other bystanders at the Academy. Quarrels between brothers are nothing unusual, but between Ranger candidates, they run the risk of tearing apart more than just a family relationship! The rest of our heroes rush to do damage control, and Stacker Pentecost does something that nobody ever expected in __**Chapter Nine: The Bro Code And Other Bullshit**__._

**PLEASE remember to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Devi and Susanti Hassan - First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24. One of four teams (including the Beckets) to survive the second cut.

Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald - First cousins, Irish nationals, mid-20s. Their parents were NATO aid workers who went to San Francisco after K-Day. Brian's father and Janet's mother both died of exposure to Kaiju Blue toxin, leading the cousins to enlist in the PPDC. One of four teams (including the Beckets) to survive the second cut.

Cady Spencer - mid-20s, Filipino-American from Portland, Oregon. His mother's family is from Manila, and she lost all contact with them after Hundun attacked in 2014. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Lea Franklin - age 17, lived in San Jose, California. Sole survivor of K-Day out of her family because she was traveling abroad with a school group. Has intense social anxiety due to PTSD, but trained for military service to avenge her family. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Christian and Chloe Warner - African-Americans from Atlanta, Georgia, ages 25 and 23, half-siblings from a blended family. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Antwan Ferrier - Jamaican national, age 38, was a cruise ship steward in Cabo San Lucas when Kaiceph attacked. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

******Familiar Faces**

Kennedy LaRue and Stephanie Lanphier - childhood friends from Seattle, age 18, high school athletes and cheerleaders who opted to try the Jaeger Academy after their college plans were derailed by the war. (If you don't know more than that, well, wait and see!) One of four teams (along with the Beckets) to survive the second cut.

Dr. Caitlin Lightcap - age 30ish, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, inventor of the pons neural bridge and co-pilot of Brawler Yukon, the first Jaeger, until its destruction.

Vic and Gunnar Tunari - brothers, successor pilots of Coyote Tango according to the canon. According to this story fanon, they are Americans of Bolivian ancestry, late 20s, sons of a US Marine who lived for several years in Okinawa, hence their being assigned to a Japanese Jaeger. They graduated Class 2016-A of the Jaeger Academy directly before the current class.


	9. The Bro Code and Other Bullshit

_**A/N:**__ Thank you all again many times over for the great reviews! We now switch to the POV of the Gage twins (collectively) for some Jaeger Academy Personnel Drama!_

_**Canon Note:**__ This chapter deals with The Naomi Incident from __Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero__. My fanon also assumes that more Mark II Jaegers (seven in total) were built than the ones that have been named by the canon so far._

**Chapter Nine: The Bro Code and Other Bullshit**

_The Jaeger Academy, Class 2016-B, Term 3..._

_December 2016..._

Gossip on Kodiak Island spread like a plague of smallpox. In December, with the weather getting worse, people were stuck indoors with not a lot to do but huddle around heaters and swap scuttlebutt. Being California boys, Bruce and Trevin Gage were cursing whoever had the idea to build a Shatterdome in Anchorage before the one in L.A. And they were no better than anyone else when it came to resisting the rumor mill. The Jaeger Academy's format didn't help; everyone knew the next batch of pilot assignments would be made at the end of the year, and the betting was frenzied.

Class 2016-B was down to three pairs: the Becket brothers, the Hassan sisters, and the cheerleaders. (Said cheerleaders still tended to huff when they were referred to that way, though not as much as when they were called Team LaLa.)

The Becket boys (aka Team Testosterone for the growing crowd treating it as Battle of the Sexes), were way out in front on almost every category that could be graded. The first of the Mark IIIs was reportedly intended for the US, and there was serious money being wagered that she would be piloted by Raleigh and Yancy.

Superstitiously, the engineering and construction crews wouldn't let the prospective pilots into the assembly building until Marshall Pentecost had made his final assignment decision. They compared it to meeting the bride before the wedding.

Nerds were weird that way, but then again, so were pilots. Barely two years and fifteen mechs into the Jaeger Program, and already it was considered very unlucky to take a Jaeger into real combat without making it dance at least once. Pentecost and some of the other hardasses had declared that any Rangers who did it would land a demerit.

Demerits were preferable to bad mojo - _everyone_ did it. The compilation of those dances set to Maroon 5's specially re-recorded "_Moves Like Jaeger_" was the pride of the Shatterdomes for everyone who didn't have a stick up their butt. Even Cherno Alpha was in it.

Marshall Pentecost had blistered the ears of his successors for making Coyote Tango do the robot. When they arrived at Anchorage for their most recent round of testing, Bruce and Trevin had high-fived Gunnar and Vic Tunari, and then run like hell. Rangers looked out for each other, but there were limits: getting between Pentecost and his target was a bad, bad idea.

The first big "scandal" (or at least "ooh LaLa" moment - pun intended) of Class 2016-B was when Stephanie Lanphier was caught doing the walk of shame from Kennedy LaRue's room.

Most of the veterans weren't that titillated; it happened all the time. The class itself, however, was all a-twitter. Ah, newbies.

"I drift-tested with Kennedy, she said she didn't swing that way!" one girl exclaimed in the mess hall.

"Well, she does now. Or maybe just in Stephanie's case after six weeks of full drifts," said another.

"That's why they call it Driftsex. Or Driftcest." Bruce and Trevin had just been on the periphery of the conversation up until then, but now they glared at the back of Antwan Ferrier's head. "Well, it does make you wonder - "

Tendo Choi saw the twins and said sharply, "Hey! Do. Not. Go. There."

"Oh, sorry."

The first of 2016-B's eliminated full-drifters, the cousins from Ireland, exchanged awkward looks, then the girl leaned forward. Bruce and Trevin held their breaths, but decided to let her say her piece. "The drift is weird, okay? You think things you never wanted to think, and the more you try not to think of something, the more you do, and you _can't_ control it. You _can't_. If you try - _pffft_. There goes the handshake. Everyone who's ever done it says the exact same thing. Whether anybody ever _acts_ on it... I have no idea, but for god's sake, full-scale piloting against kaiju, that kind of pressure? I'm not asking and I'm not judging, and neither should anybody else."

"Thanks, babe," Bruce called, making her blush when she realized they were listening.

"First rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club," Tendo intoned. "First rule of the Corps, whether you're a Ranger or a candidate or tech or janitor - you do not Go There."

Christian Warner, one of the siblings eliminated by the second cut, was nodding vigorously. "To gossip is human. To Go There is just wrong. That's where we all draw the line and protect our own."

"Christian, you are such a ham," sighed his sister.

"But I'm right."

"Well, yeah." She grinned at Bruce and Trevin, then waved as a diminutive figure came through the mess hall doors. "Hey, Little Lea! Where you been?"

The class baby looked shell-shocked. "What's wrong?" Tendo demanded. He held up a hand to stop all the others from bombarding the shy girl with questions, and pulled her aside. Bruce and Trevin and the other onlookers all pretended to chat like they weren't watching. Whatever she whispered made Tendo's eyes bug out. "What?!"

She repeated it, and he looked frantically around, then caught Bruce and Trevin's eyes and jerked his head at them. They followed the pair out the mess hall door. "What's up?" asked Trevin.

"Yancy and Raleigh got into a _fight_!" she breathed.

They stared at her and Tendo in confusion. "What?"

That was crazy. The Becket boys were rowdy and competitive (not unlike Bruce and Trevin themselves), but they'd been tight from day one even before drifting. "You sure?" asked Bruce.

"Yancy has a black eye."

_Raleigh _hit Yancy?! No way. Little bro adored Yance; you only had to be around them twenty minutes to figure that out.

"Couldn't just be somebody slipped up in the Kwoon?" Trevin suggested.

But Lea shook her head. Class baby or not, the girl was smart; Engineering was practically begging her to transfer permanently. If she'd seen the evidence and thought it wasn't just an accident... she probably was right.

She confirmed it. "I think they were off base, but they just got pulled into Marshall Pentecost's office. They're both - " she gestured, up and down. "And they're _mad_ at each other!"

Poor kid was completely freaked. She was the subject of some gossip in her own right; people wondered if she'd been such a shy little thing before Trespasser turned her into a ward of the state. She certainly wasn't the only California kid with major PTSD. But she wouldn't have the first clue how to deal with Ranger civil war.

Bruce and Trevin looked at each other. "Okay. Nothing really to be done until Marshall gets done with them. You take it easy, all right? We'll see what we can do."

Instead of going back to the mess hall and facing her classmates' questions, she headed off for the barracks, probably to cry. "She has a major crush on Yancy," Tendo murmured once she'd gone.

"I know we don't have an age minimum, but she is hella young for this," Bruce sighed.

"Oh, she's stronger than she looks in every way," Tendo said firmly. "But yeah, she is young, not that it ever stopped the kaiju. So," he clapped his hands and leaned towards them. "Raleigh and Yance - what the hell do we do? How bad is it?"

"That's what we gotta find out first. With us, Mr. Choi. We're recruiting you to the _internal_ peacekeeping force, effective immediately."

"Yes, sirs, at your service!" They marched off down the hall.

* * *

><p>So began the second big scandal of Class 2016-B, not nearly as funny as the first.<p>

It was about a girl. Of course, it was about a girl. Bruce and Trevin were betting dollars to donuts that it was either a girl or something that had gone down when their mom died. Tendo feared that one of them had freaked out about something _weird_ in the drift, since their afternoon sim run had gone awry, but the twins doubted it.

"Without actually Going There, I can tell you that if there's gonna be that kind of meltdown, it usually happens at the beginning. They've been increasing their score with almost every sim. Whatever weirdness gets imagined, they've worked out how to deal. This was about a fact, not a fantasy."

Tendo recognized that they were speaking from experience and didn't question it. He was already establishing an impressive network of "guys who know a guy who knows a guy" and traced the story back to the bar, and they found a talkative patron. It didn't take long to work it out: some Jaeger Fly had put the moves on them, and Raleigh had liked what he saw, but either deliberately or just stupidly, Yancy had ended up doing the follow-up with her.

"Aw, hell," Trevin face-palmed. "Did little bro really think she was into him for him and not the job title? He's a cute one; I thought he'd have more experience with girls than that."

"With girls, maybe," Tendo mused. "But when it comes to Yancy, he's got some blinders. And to be fair, Yance doesn't lord it over him half as much as a lot of guys would. Buuut... I dunno. Yancy's the one who keeps proclaiming it taboo to date intra-class - probably to put Lea off. Now he pounces on the first off-base girl that Rals has his eye on, and Rals doesn't know until they drift?" He wrinkled his nose. "Something smells, my friends."

"Smells like the bro code getting a little burnt. Yep." Bruce checked the time and then pulled up the class rosters. "Thank god, they're still on the roll. How long've they been in with Pentecost?"

"Hour and a half, give or take." Tendo raised his eyebrows. "You think we're okay?"

The twins slowly nodded. "He's a stickler. Most of the Marshalls are, but especially him. I think if he was going to scrub 'em for misconduct, he'd have done it by now. If they're still talking, I think he's just chewing them out, giving them warnings. _But... _if they're really on the outs with each other, that could be what kills us."

"Literally, since they're the most promising set of pilots we've got at the moment, and the first of the Mark IIIs is about to be assigned," Tendo fumed. "All because of some stupid chick who's hot for mechs!"

"Hey, be fair; I don't think she gave Raleigh a promise ring. There're male Flies too. We're the ones who're supposed to be above it." Trevin leaned against the wall next to him.

By now, half the population of the Academy was finding reasons to wander the halls and try to catch the action. One of the fightmasters walked by and smirked at Bruce, Trevin, and Tendo. "Don't worry, they're not being scratched. They just left his office."

"Shewwww," Tendo blew his breath out and slid down the wall. "Okay, now what?"

They tracked their targets down. Yancy was hiding in quarters, but all witnesses reported that he was indeed sporting one hell of a shiner. Raleigh had wandered outside. "At least they seem to be talking to each other," said Chloe Warner hopefully. "Can I do anything?"

Tendo patted her cheek. "Don't take this the wrong way, Doll, but I really think this is a moment for the Y-chromosomes." She swatted him, but smiled ruefully, conceding the point. "And for delicate handling."

"_That_ is mutually exclusive," Chloe informed him, but headed off to her own room.

"Ugh, as much as I hate to say it, Trev and I better talk to Raleigh," said Bruce. "Of course, the Alaskan kid decides to stew outdoors after midnight in December."

"You sure? I'm older than them, but I actually get along with little bro a little better."

Trevin nodded. "You can still explain the bro code to Yancy just fine, if it needs explaining, but I think little bro needs some mentoring from his experienced Ranger elders."

"I think I get you. Wow." Tendo shook his head and chuckled. "Of all the things I expected from the PPDC, I didn't figure on starring in a Lifetime Original Movie."

"I know, right?" They all laughed. "Hey, needs must," said Bruce. "Like you said before, we're at war. It's the same reason we let those Psych Analysts blather about our feelings and triggers - it's the only way we can run the damn Jaegers. Best kept secret in the Corps: Machismo's the first thing you sacrifice."

And off they went. Goddamn, it was cold outside. The things Bruce and Trevin did for their comrades. They found Becket Minor on a low wall near the airstrip, not shivering nearly as hard as a normal human being from a normal climate should have been. Still, nobody was likely to see them in the pitch dark, and in the clear sky, the Northern Lights were putting on a show.

Their footsteps on the frozen ground were loud, but Raleigh didn't yell at them to leave him alone. Promising sign. "First time we saw them was when we came up here two years ago," Trevin told him, gesturing to the lights.

Raleigh shrugged. "I don't notice them that much anymore. Sure, they're pretty." He looked down and muttered, "Gonna chew me out?"

"Nah, that's the C.O.'s job." They sat down on either side of him. "We just don't want to lose a good team two weeks shy of graduation. For king and country, we're playing the Ya-Ya Brotherhood, which no manly men should ever do. Honor our sacrifice, son."

Raleigh laughed out loud and would've fallen backwards off the wall if they hadn't caught him. Then he hissed, "_Fuck_," and doubled forward. They pretended not to notice until he pulled it together. "Not ever getting into it with him didn't seem like a tall order until now."

"Is that Pentecost's thing now? Christ, that's unrealistic. _We_ go at it! You don't have to never disagree to be drift compatible," Bruce told him.

"After being Rangers?" Raleigh asked curiously. "I mean... _really_ pissed off, not just disagreeing?"

Bruce turned the flashlight on his phone and held it up to his face. "See this?" He tapped the long scar on his chin, then pointed past Raleigh. "_He_ did that." Raleigh's jaw dropped. "Last year."

"And _he_ will never let me forget it," Trevin sighed. "Yes, that is the work of my evil hand - which I sort of forgot was holding the chest plate of my armor at the time." And now they could laugh at Raleigh's appalled expression. "Without getting too into the gory details, you and your brother are gonna get into it. The pressure only gets worse, the Jaeger Flies get more aggressive, and the paparazzi starts stalking you the second you're assigned to a mech."

Raleigh made a face. "If you're trying to 'save the team,' why do you sound like you're trying to talk me out of it?"

They shook their heads. "It's fair warning, kid, just like everything else. Sending people in unprepared gets them killed, and Rangers getting killed would mean a lot more people die."

The kid cringed. What was he, the second-youngest of this class? Eighteenth birthday was coming up; Yancy had been pushing for a party until this mess. Jesus. Why were the brass putting kids still dealing with high school hormones into life-and-death battles?!

_It didn't stop the kaiju, _Tendo had said of Little Lea. Yeah, that was the reason the Academy didn't even have a minimum age. It was a fair point, but that didn't mean anybody had to like it.

They reexamined their goals for this conversation, and took a different tack. "But to give you a good reason to fix this, here's a rabbit we chase sometimes. We've both had some great days. Valedictorian and salutatorian in high school, one-two. Getting into West Point, graduating one-two again, making Army Rangers, coming home from Iraq together, we're the military brat version of disgusting overachievers." Raleigh grinned. In the faint light, he looked younger than ever.

"We have a lot of good shared memories. But the best one, bar none..." They pointed in unison down the hill towards the valley that housed the proving grounds. The Assembly Building was an almost invisible darker silhouette, hulking at the far end of the grounds. "The first time we walked in him. He's _ours_. You'll get to train in Brawler shortly. That's exciting. It's like learning to drive the first time, or learning to fly a Blackhawk, in our case. But they don't think with you, don't feel with you. When you're in your _own_ Jaeger? You're a god on Earth. We move and he moves. He feels and we feel. You'd go to war with a volcano."

The kid was completely awestruck. It was fun sometimes, telling stories about what it was like to pilot, seeing kids get all starry-eyed, but none of their public statements had ever been so candid. They understood the need for recruiting; they were army brats, after all. But this wasn't about recruiting. It was about hanging onto one of the few people who fit the criteria, and who might have what it took to beat back the devil.

"I get it," Raleigh whispered. "Marshall said lives depend on the bond. Between the pilots."

"He's right. Jaegers don't move without it. They sure as hell can't fight. When you look at what we're fighting, you get why it's so important. But it's not just we give and the world takes. That's what we're trying to tell you. You get something back that most people can't even imagine."

Bruce leaned past him to prod his twin. "And not just the Jaeger. Before that, me and my brother were never in the same company - it's not allowed. It's dangerous, bad morale in the army, two siblings in combat. We knew our jobs, but lemme tell you, it's shit, both of us being deployed in combat zones and not knowing where the other one is, knowing there's no way to find out for weeks."

That got to him. "Really does put it in perspective."

"Your brother's gonna piss you off again, kid, it's a fact of life. You'll piss him off. We're all still human. From now on, if that happens, deal with it the way the brass allows: in the Kwoon. Go at it. You don't need to draw blood to make your point, and you'd be surprised how much sparring works stuff out." Bruce winked. "And that way you don't have to explain to the man in charge how you hit him in the chest plate with your face."

"Oh, hell, our C.O. wasn't that bad about last year; it was the PR guys who were ready to fry us. Imagine trying to spin that!" Trevin groaned, and Raleigh started laughing again. They exchanged a grin, and decided they'd gotten their point across. "Now, maybe you Eskimos can sit out here all night, but I can't feel my ass or my feet anymore. We're going in."

Laughing harder, Raleigh got to his feet with him. "You California guys are such pansies."

"Watch it, Pipsqueak, we're Jaeger pilots, _and _we outnumber you!"

"Not for long! Marshall said we're a heartbeat away!"

_"__We." Bull's eye. _It would be okay.

* * *

><p>Yancy might have been the one with the black eye, but he knew after Tendo left that he was the one who needed to do the most groveling.<p>

_Damn it, I didn't mean to do anything! _Half of him argued. _He never mentioned her, I didn't know he was that interested!_

_Bullshit, _his other side retorted._ You didn't even like that girl. You went out with her because Raleigh did, and you wanted to put him in his place, show him who's boss. _

He'd always had his inner angel and inner devil arguing on his shoulder like a cartoon. Until six weeks ago, he'd never imagined that Raleigh did too. Maybe Yancy Becket wasn't as weird a specimen of humanity as he sometimes thought himself.

Or maybe he was. If there was a single word that encompassed everything about becoming a Ranger, a word that had been used more than any other: Weird. Definitely weird.

By now, he should have been asleep. It was hard enough to get through these long days without enough sleep. But... he had to fix this. Maybe his brother would notice a concession that he waited up.

By one a.m., he was pacing to keep himself awake. Tendo had said someone else was talking to Raleigh, but... maybe Raleigh just wasn't having it. Maybe after weeks of drifting, he'd finally seen to the heart of his big brother and realized what kind of man Yancy was.

_You're a dirtbag, Yancy Becket. You screwed over your sister because you like your brother better when you were supposed to love them both equally. Now you've screwed over your brother just for kicks. And possibly screwed the whole world over in the process. _

He caught a look at himself in the mirror and scowled. That black eye was going to be embarrassing as hell starting tomorrow. His ice pack had melted. He took it down to the bathroom and tossed it into the sink.

_What the hell am I going to do? _

Coming back into their room, he froze. Raleigh was standing there. Still scuffed up, knuckles bruised, though not half as marked up as Yancy. He'd certainly landed a good punch.

_Maybe I deserved it. _

They stared at each other, and Yancy noticed absently that Raleigh had an ice pack too. He must've just picked it up from the infirmary; it was steaming. But it wasn't on his bruises. He was holding it out.

Something inside Yancy cracked, and he rushed to speak before Raleigh did. He had to say this before Raleigh did. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, Rals." _Forgive me, please, don't hate me. You're the only one who didn't, and I screwed you, I'm sorry. _

Raleigh just said, "Me too," and shook the pack at him. Yancy took it. "Can we fix it?" He didn't mean Yancy's face.

"I want to. It was... _I _was stupid. Marshall's right. Putting... everything at risk. It's not just about you and me... getting along. We can do it. We can be Rangers." _We can save the world._

"The Gages talked to me." Yancy was surprised; he'd assumed it would be Cady or Antwan or one of the other guys from their class. _Shit, that's embarrassing. Not only does Marshall know, the full-blown Rangers do. _

But Raleigh had a funny, faraway look in his eyes like he got reading World War II memoirs. "They say it's worth it. All the weird drift stuff, the press, the danger. I believe 'em."

"That's good enough for me." Yancy put the ice pack down and started to reach for Raleigh, but caught himself. Maybe Raleigh still wouldn't want to be touched. It wasn't like a drift flashback - but Raleigh sensed it, and closed the rest of the distance between them, wrapping his arms around him.

They didn't hug quite as hard as that first day (they were both too sore after brawling and then sitting too long) but... it was a little like that. Coming back to Earth. Knowing they'd be okay.

"You're up past your bedtime, old man," Rals muttered.

Yancy snorted. "You're underage for six more days, brat. I can still send you to bed 'till then." They let each other go at the same time. "Are we good?"

Raleigh nodded, calm and resolved. "We're good."

_Aw, hell, is he getting taller?! _

* * *

><p>Even before Yancy Becket appeared at morning classes with a black eye, word was all around the Academy about the Beckets' brawl. Caitlin Lightcap found herself stomping around the monitoring room and ranting like a teenager. "Shit, shit, <em>shit, <em>that is ALL we need!"

Stacker Pentecost remained cool and collected through her tantrum. "They apologized and assured me it won't happen again – and if it does, they're finished. But I want you to keep a close eye on the stability of their handshake today. Not to say that you don't do that every day, but you know what to look for."

Caitlin sighed. "Yes, I know. Goddamn it. We're so close. I haven't been so excited about a team since the triplets – and not because I've got money on it."

"I wouldn't know about that," Pentecost replied. No, of course, he'd never admit to even knowing that there was a bracket for who would land a Jaeger first.

Caitlin actually didn't have money on it. That was a scandal she didn't need, although she was having far too much fun listening to the chatter about the Battle of the Sexes and the Battle of the Siblings. The panic among the gamblers when the cheerleaders hooked up was priceless. (Caitlin had seen it coming, but then again, being able to recognize the signs of romantic interest in brain chemistry gave her an unfair advantage. Another reason not to actually bet.)

She watched the pair like a hawk when they arrived for their sim session, and there was a marked increase in the number of tactical analysts on the monitors today. It took a lot of self-restraint not to pull the Beckets aside and add her own voice to the undoubtedly-endless stream of advice/admonishment.

_Boys, boys, please, please, don't blow this! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find drift compatible candidates, let alone ones who can meet all the other qualifications? Do you realize how many lives could be riding on this?! Will it help if I beg? No Jaeger Fly is worth this!_

Word had even gotten around of the girl's name: Naomi Sokolov. She'd been a regular at the bar, though thank any god in existence, she was starting college somewhere in the Lower Forty-Eight and hadn't been back in weeks.

_Thank God, you stupid girl. You won't be missed, and I hope you grow up a little. These men aren't toys for you to play with, they're our protectors._

Yancy had a nasty black eye that everyone pretended not to stare at. Both of the Beckets had bruised and scuffed hands, still more evidence of just how violently they'd fought. They were at least talking to each other, and while tense, they were composed as the simulator was set.

Caitlin found herself chewing her nails, and couldn't even find it funny that the Hassan sisters, Kennedy LaRue, and Stephanie Lanphier showed up to watch the sim in real time. She couldn't resist turning the mikes on in the screening room. "Did you guys talk to them?" Stephanie asked the sisters.

"Not last night, just a little this morning before drills," said Devi. Like a prayer, she said slowly, "I _think _they're all right. Tendo was talking to Yancy for a long time, and the Gages were outside with Raleigh too."

Kennedy perked up. "The Gages came by the mess hall earlier looking for Yancy! Tendo said he'd gone already – you know how he is when it's early – but he gave them a thumbs-up!"

"This was so _stupid_," growled Susanti. "If it's true – if it's really just a fight over a girl – I will hit Yancy's other eye and both of Raleigh's!"

"Suze!"

Devi snorted. "The younger ones, they can be so violent."

"Shut up!" But all the girls were laughing.

"We're ready, Doc," murmured her assistant, and she quickly turned the feed off and put her attention back on the sim pod.

"Ready, gentlemen?"

"Ready," the Beckets chorused, just like any other day.

Caitlin crossed her fingers as the tech started the pons. "Initiating neural handshake in five…four…three…"

In the sim pod, Raleigh and Yancy looked at each other and smiled. Caitlin's heart leapt. All the monitors lit up, the feeds sprang to life with the drift as the brothers' minds blended. One of them hissed, and a feed stuttered – but then it was there, strong and solid. "Neural handshake complete."

They were at one hundred percent. Caitlin wanted to jump up and down as the sim instructor gave them the scenario: defending Sydney against Virtual Scissure's attack in 2014. The candidates would have every known kaiju's statistics memorized by now, but the details of a drop pre-Jaeger Program would be invented by the tacticians.

It was a hard sim, not that any of them were easy. The tacticians had left in some of the godawful blunders by the Australian military, so the virtual Jaeger and its pilots were having to navigate those fiascoes amid fighting the kaiju. But they were doing well. Then the blast from the first nuke nearly knocked the Jaeger off its feet, and the techs yelped as Yancy got the edge of his harness right on his swollen cheekbone.

"Oooww, that had to hurt," muttered someone.

The sim could leave candidates a little beat up, but that was part of the point – it wasn't a fraction of what a kaiju would throw at them. (Or another ill-timed nuke.) But those bruising motions could cause a worse complication: it could trigger a rabbit.

An alarm on the right side of the pons warned them Yancy was drifting off. "Right hemisphere, you're going out of alignment!"

"Yance? Yancy!" Raleigh bellowed. "Hey! You're drifting – dammit – BRUCE WAYNE IS IRON MAN!"

Yancy blinked, and the lines on his monitor stopped sliding off at an angle. "Wha'?!"

"REFOCUS!"

"Right," Yancy muttered, and his readings lurched back into alignment.

Caitlin looked at her colleagues, all of whom had watched hundreds of simulations with dozens of candidates by now. Sergio had slipped into the room and was watching against the back wall. "Well, there's one I've never heard before."

"It worked," someone pointed out. The Beckets managed to head Scissure off on his return to the city and drove him back into the islands. That would be a booster for their score.

They were coming up on four hours, and the radiation from the first nuke was starting to interfere with their systems when they finally brought Scissure down, sweat-drenched and panting, but "alive" along with their Jaeger. Caitlin grinned and looked at feed of the screening room: the four women were on their feet, pumping their fists in the air. If she turned on the speakers, they were probably whooping it up.

The score calculation wasn't a personal best… but it was _damn _good.

Stacker Pentecost came in while the Beckets were still getting out of their drivesuits. "Well?" he asked Caitlin.

"See for yourself, sir." He examined the reports of the solid handshake and combat performance. "As Miss Hassan was overheard to say this morning, I think we're all right."

But she spoke too soon; as the Beckets reappeared entering the screening room, they were arguing. _Oh FUCK! _She toggled the speakers.

" – Look, I was the one who got physical first."

"I grabbed you!"

"Grabbing my arm isn't the same as me slugging you in the eye, Yance. I've got the money. I should pay it."

"Yeah, but I started the whole thing. You saw that clear enough…" Yancy frowned to himself, still processing all he'd seen and heard in today's drift. "_What_ did you say about Iron Man?!"

Their four fellow candidates, who'd been watching the exchange with wide eyes, finally dared to chime in. "He said Bruce Wayne is Iron Man," said Kennedy.

At Yancy's baffled look, Raleigh shrugged. "I just needed to get your attention so you'd quit drifting, and didn't want to say 'pink elephant."

There was a burst of guffaws from the instructors' room, hastily stifled. Caitlin snickered behind her hand. Even Stacker Pentecost looked dangerously close to smiling. Stephanie folded her arms and glowered at the younger Becket. "Don't knock the pink elephant. _Now_ what are you two bitching about?"

Both boys went scarlet. Resigned, Yancy sighed, "As everyone in the building knows, we caused some damage. We need to pay for it."

"Aww," someone cooed.

"I would have ordered them to do it in any case," Stacker muttered. _You are such a buzzkill, _thought Caitlin.

"And you can't even agree on that?" demanded Suze. "Pfaw! _Men!_"

"Great, they're ganging up on us," Raleigh muttered, but he was starting to grin. He looked at his brother. "Fifty-fifty?"

"Fine, kiddo. Let's go down there after dinner." Yancy made to ruffle his hair, getting a growl, and the younger Becket scampered off. Yancy smirked to himself.

But something in his attitude apparently triggered another rabbit for his classmates. The four women looked at each other, then jumped into his path. "Ah-ah!" Devi planted her hand on his chest. "What are you up to, Mr. Becket?"

Yancy apparently thought he could engage the women as his co-conspirators. He was wrong. "Nothing, really. We've cleared it up, I just need to get down to the bar and pay _before _mess."

"ARRRGH!" Kennedy grabbed the sides of her head and roared, though the other three all vocally expressed their disapproval. She was just the loudest. "You – are – an – IDIOT!" Yancy reared back as she lunged forward to bellow at him, "Is that not how this whole pathetic mess got started!? GOD! You going behind his back just because you're Mr. Big Brother?"

"No, no, it's not like that - "

"It is _exactly_ like that!" Susanti snapped. "Will you listen to a younger sibling?" Yancy froze. "This is not okay! You've made an agreement. Now you go back on it because older brother knows best?! Maybe that was fine when you were kids, but you're not anymore – you're Rangers! BOTH of you! Right when you celebrate Christmas, we find out who gets the next Jaeger! If your partner can't trust you, it will NOT be you!"

Dead silence in all three rooms. Caitlin wondered if even Pentecost was holding his breath. She certainly was.

"I…" Yancy wilted. "I didn't think of it like that."

Now Stephanie came to stand in front of him and poke him in the collarbone. "Start. You've got _three_ younger siblings in this room, Becket." She gestured to herself, Kennedy, and Susanti. "I have a big sister, Kennedy has a big brother. Why do you think we're here together and not with them? And why are Devi and Suze here together? It's not just about trust. It's about respect. If you don't respect him, he will not trust you."

"And if you need an elder sibling's word," Devi casually raised her hand, leaning against the wall. "I've always tried to take care of my little sister. Always. I love her no less, and once, yes, I could tell her what to do. But not here." She pointed towards the sim pod. "In there, we're equals, or we fail."

Yancy looked down, defeated. "You're right. Yeah, you're right. I'm a dumbass."

"You guys are far and away the best team: we all know it," said Stephanie, softening a little. "The whole world's in this together; we need you to succeed. _Say_ it, Yance."

"I'll keep my word. We'll go pay after mess, fifty-fifty."

"Good boy." Yancy was a head taller than Devi, but she had six years on him. At that moment, it showed. "Now, go ice your face and let us have a turn saving Sydney. And we need to plan Raleigh's birthday party."

He smiled more easily (if sheepishly). "Thanks, guys."

The women grinned at each other as the door closed behind him. "Booyah!" hissed Kennedy, pumping her fist. Her fellows laughed and high-fived.

Caitlin looked at Stacker, who was stroking his chin thoughtfully. "What do you think, sir?" asked Sergio.

"I think… score one for Team Estrogen." With a bland smile and polite nod to the techs, the Marshall departed, as if oblivious to all the jaws that dropped.

"Did he just…"

"He _did_!"

Caitlin looked at her husband and shook her head. "Stacker Pentecost weighing in on Battle of the Sexes. Now I've seen everything."

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming Soon_**_: Raleigh Becket turns eighteen - party in the Anchorage Shatterdome! But will Marshall Pentecost insist on halting the festivities? And... Hercules Hansen is in the house! The Beckets would not meet him for several years... but he would never forget his first impression of them in __**Chapter Ten: Up and Coming**__**!**_

**Please don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Devi and Susanti Hassan - First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24. One of four teams (including the Beckets) to survive the second cut.

Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald - First cousins, Irish nationals, mid-20s. Their parents were NATO aid workers who went to San Francisco after K-Day. Brian's father and Janet's mother both died of exposure to Kaiju Blue toxin, leading the cousins to enlist in the PPDC. One of four teams (including the Beckets) to survive the second cut, but failed to make the third cut.

Cady Spencer - mid-20s, Filipino-American from Portland, Oregon. His mother's family is from Manila, and she lost all contact with them after Hundun attacked in 2014. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Lea Franklin - age 17, lived in San Jose, California. Sole survivor of K-Day out of her family because she was traveling abroad with a school group. Has intense social anxiety due to PTSD, but trained for military service to avenge her family. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Christian and Chloe Warner - African-Americans from Atlanta, Georgia, ages 25 and 23, half-siblings from a blended family. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Antwan Ferrier - Jamaican national, age 38, was a cruise ship steward in Cabo San Lucas when Kaiceph attacked. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

**Familiar Faces**

Kennedy LaRue and Stephanie Lanphier - childhood friends from Seattle, age 18, high school athletes and cheerleaders who opted to try the Jaeger Academy after their college plans were derailed by the war. (If you don't know more than that, well, wait and see!) One of four teams (along with the Beckets) to survive the second cut. The relationship that develops between them in this story is my own fanon.

Dr. Caitlin Lightcap - age 30ish, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, inventor of the pons neural bridge and co-pilot of Brawler Yukon, the first Jaeger, until its destruction. Afterwards, she retired as a Ranger to supervise pons training and drift sync testing for Rangers and candidates at the Jaeger Academy.

Sergio D'onofrio - age 30ish, test pilot and then co-pilot of Brawler Yukon, the first Jaeger, until its destruction, and moved on to a training position at the Jaeger Academy. (He was a Lieutenant in Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero - I'm assuming he got promoted. He and Caitlin Lightcap fell in love in the process of testing Brawler and the pons, and Stacker Pentecost referred to them as "the D'onofrios" a year later, so I'm assuming they are now married.)

Vic and Gunnar Tunari - brothers, successor pilots of Coyote Tango according to the canon. According to this story fanon, they are Americans of Bolivian ancestry, late 20s, sons of a US Marine who lived for several years in Okinawa, hence their being assigned to a Japanese Jaeger. They graduated Class 2016-A of the Jaeger Academy directly before the current class.


	10. Up and Coming

_**A/N:**__ I'm blown away by the response to Chapter 9! Thank you all so very much! Because I love my readers, a present: Chapter 10, early. And since this chapter is a tad short, I will try to post Chapter 11 tomorrow - but please don't forget to give me your thoughts on this chapter!_

**Chapter Ten: Up and Coming**

_Jaeger Academy, Class 2016-B, Term 3…_

_December 2016…_

The Beckets landed another personal best in the simulator on December 9th, two days before Raleigh's birthday. Even Stacker Pentecost was heard to agree: they were good.

The candidates relaxed a little in those final days of Term Three, keeping up their drills and working on improving their simulation scores. It just so happened that on the 10th, the candidates were ordered to report to the proving ground for pre-testing in Brawler Yukon's conn-pod, with their first actual Jaeger operation to be the following day. Nobody said outright that it was timed deliberately, but there were an awful lot of grins and winks being thrown around.

Stephanie, Kennedy, and the Hassans nobly invited the Beckets to take the first slot in Brawler on the 11th, and stood in the proving grounds' LOCCENT with many classmates, all wearing shit-eating grins.

They were joined by Bruce and Trevin Gage, as well as Vic and Gunnar Tunari, the pilots of Coyote Tango, whose Mark Is were being refitted while the Mark IIs were shuffled around. The latter pair, despite being Marshall Pentecost's successor pilots, were as relaxed and friendly to the trainees as the Gage twins. They were all too happy to accept the Gages' invitation to a party in Romeo Blue's launch bay.

"Maybe it's wussy of me, but I hope they have a good first run," said Steffie. "It'd be shit to completely blow their first time in a real Jaeger _and _on Raleigh's birthday."

"This may be the military, but it's not _that _military," Gunnar told her. "Remember what they told you first term. No ranking of cadets, no competition against anything but yourself. This is about fighting kaiju, not each other, and part of the long-term plan is for the Jaegers to start acting in groups. So we've all got no reason not to want them to do well."

"Amen," said Tendo. They'd gotten that lecture multiple times during all the physical trials, but he wondered if anybody could have predicted coming out for graduation feeling like family, even the ones who hadn't made it. He grinned when Raleigh and Yancy's vitals came over the monitor. "Our boys are a little nervous!"

Especially Raleigh, but both Beckets had very high heart rates as the pod locked into place. "Aww!" said several of the girls.

They'd all had the chance to watch Jaegers launching for testing on the grounds after six months on base, but this was the first time two of their own had been in the conn-pod. Tendo had to admit his own heart rate was a little up as the bay doors opened and Brawler Yukon, the first Jaeger, glided into view.

It was interesting to see the neural handshake with the Jaeger on the LOCCENT screens. Tendo thought he wouldn't mind pursuing this controller's eye view of the mechs for himself.

"_Right hemisphere, calibrating_." Unsurprisingly, Yancy was on the right.

"_Left hemisphere, calibrating_." Raleigh's voice was level, even though his heart rate was higher than ever.

_D'aww, he's all grown up! I think I might cry, _Tendo thought.

They calibrated smoothly, and Tendo wasn't the only one who jumped as Brawler raised his massive arms and clasped his hands with a rumble outside. The techs applauded. "Lining up nicely, Brawler Yukon," said the controller.

"_Brawler Yukon, ready for deployment_," Raleigh announced, and now the candidates applauded.

"You may proceed with pre-combat diagnostic drills, gentlemen," said Marshall Pentecost.

"_Copy that, sir. Initiating walk-through_."

It wasn't as if the three remaining teams hadn't gone through these drills multiple times in the simulators – for multiple Jaegers, including Brawler. Tendo could probably have done it in his sleep, and he hadn't even made it to the sims, just watched the others. But it was still nerve-wracking as the Beckets took control of Brawler and exercised its limbs, joints, and weapons one after the other, then made the enormous mech take its first step under their control.

They had a few wobbles in the maneuvers. Brawler was older and a different design than all his offspring, one of the reasons he'd been decommissioned after nearly getting flattened a year ago. He'd been refurbished for training once all the Mark Is were up and running, but some of his systems still responded a little differently. But the star candidates of Class 2016-B kept him upright and under control. Tendo could see a lot of broad grins among the Academy staff – and on the faces of the active Rangers.

The final test was launching the shoulder rockets at offshore targets. "Do they know those missiles are live?" murmured someone.

"Shh!"

Yancy armed his launcher first. "_Target acquired_."

"Fire at will, Rangers."

"_Preparing to fire in three…two…one_…" Smoke obscured the grounds as the rocket launched, luckily not going wildly towards the Assembly Building or any other direction, and a second later, the right-hand target exploded.

"Direct hit," announced the instructors on the monitors.

"_Left shoulder rocket preparing to launch_," said Raleigh. "_Three…two…one_…" The second rocket fired and took out the target.

Tendo couldn't help it; he whooped and applauded, but he was drowned out by everybody else. Pentecost didn't even blink. "Test run complete, Brawler Yukon. Return to Bay One for power-down."

"_Copy that. Returning to bay_."

"Well done, gentlemen." That was the only comment that Pentecost had. Damn that poker face!

But Bruce and Trevin looked at Tendo and winked in unison. "We've got something special planned tonight. Bring the kid and the guests; we'll supply the entertainment."

Tendo raised his eyebrows, and wondered if they'd all get expelled for having strippers on-base.

* * *

><p>Years later, when he met Raleigh Becket for the second time in Hong Kong, Herc Hansen refrained from telling him that their paths had almost crossed even <em>before<em> Manila. The Beckets made quite an impression on the then-pilot of Lucky Seven, but Herc had known that to bring it up would only cause Raleigh Becket pain. It really was a shame. That memory stuck in his head, and for years after, it always made him smile.

His visit to the newly-opened Anchorage Shatterdome wasn't planned. He'd been down in Lima working with the new Mark II pilots, and intended to head up to Panama and Los Angeles to assist in the continued planning and construction of their domes. But Southern California was being hit with severe storms, so the flight was diverted.

"We were planning to pick up Marshall Pentecost for his transfer down to Lima tomorrow, Ranger Hansen," his American escort had said. "Would you care for a detour to the Academy?"

It was quite a few hours out of their way, but Herc was glad to be doing something to do other than just twiddling his thumbs over a half-constructed facility in South America. The last time Herc had been to Kodiak, the PPDC facilities there had only been half-built, the Academy still very much a work in progress.

However, they surprised Marshall Pentecost, and perhaps it was Herc's Australian prejudices coming out, but it always struck him that the British (especially their military) didn't like surprises. Then again, if a coterie of suited-up brass had descended on Sydney with no warning, wanting a tour of Herc's domain, he supposed he'd be a little defensive too.

"Incredible job you've done with the place," he told Pentecost from the heart, as they toured the Academy facilities. "Two years ago, it was a couple of warehouses and an old airstrip."

"Where's Dr. Lightcap these days? Is her base of operations still here?" asked Secretary Krieger. "Or is she down in the Shatterdome?

"Pons Science is based in the Shatterdome, but she also has offices here." Pentecost glanced at his watch. "She's probably still in the Academy lab. Final tests are being completed on the latest class's Ranger Readiness."

"It's ten p.m.!" protested someone, laughing.

"No rest for the brilliant," Herc observed. "I wouldn't mind saying hello, but no need to disturb the masters at work."

"I doubt she'll mind. This way."

There was music playing in the laboratory, to the amusement of Herc and the dismay of Pentecost. They found Dr. Caitlin Lightcap and Captain Sergio D'onofrio with a few of their underlings at work, as expected, but there was video playing on the main screen of some festival or party somewhere.

Lightcap yelped and hurriedly muted her screen when her visitors entered, but not before Krieger exclaimed, "Is that Romeo Blue?"

The inaugural Jaeger pilots looked like deer in the headlights, and Pentecost was less than impressed. Herc looked at the screen again and realized that the party was a little closer to home - in a Shatterdome Jaeger Bay. Romeo Blue did indeed provide the backdrop of several dozen people, many in PPDC gear, drinking, dancing, and laughing.

_As the saying goes: Busted!_ Herc thought, and couldn't keep a grin off his face.

D'onofrio explained, "One of the finalists is celebrating a birthday. This close to the end of term, most of the data is in."

Pentecost cleared his throat. "I'm aware that Mr. Becket turned eighteen today, and his friends wanted to acknowledge it, but a rave in a Jaeger Bay is not appropriate."

"It's hardly a rave, sir," D'onofrio protested, even as Lightcap exclaimed, "'_Acknowledge_' it?" in an incredulous voice.

"British are allergic to having fun," muttered one of Herc's travel companions, even as Pentecost was turning stiffly to Krieger and the brass.

"My apologies. I'll have the instigators put on report."

Herc was debating whether to speak up as D'onofrio and Lightcap exchanged dismayed looks, but to his surprise, even Krieger smiled. "That might be an overreaction, Marshall. I see the Gages are well aware of this event."

He nodded to the screen, and sure enough, Herc spied the twins taking over the center of the room, making some kind of speech along with the Tunaris. Once they pulled a laughing, blushing youth up to join them and began pompously directing the crowd, it was obvious that it was sing-along time. J-tech crews in Coyote Tango and Romeo Blue jumpsuits swayed arm-in-arm with a crowd of Academy trainees.

Lightcap shot the brass a challenging look. "We went earlier this evening, sirs. For cake."

Stacker Pentecost Was Not Amused, but D'onofrio stared his superior down. "To ease your concerns, Marshall, I can tell you that there's very little alcohol being consumed, and no drugs. They're simply enjoying the moment."

Someone accidentally (or otherwise) toggled the sound back on. "_ - ap-py birrrrthday, deeeeear Raaaaaleeeeigh! Haaap-py Biiiiirthday toooo youuuu!"_

The bay descended into bellows and applause as party-goers crowded around the honoree for embraces, claps on the back, and knuckles on the head. Herc was smiling until then, but a second look at the birthday boy gave him a sudden pang. Christ, he was young. "_How_ old's that kid?"

"Rangers aren't kids," Pentecost pointed out crossly as some horrid pop dance song started up and the whole group erupted into motion.

"No, but even we regular military men had to unwind sometime," said one of the other senior officers - who was generally a stickler for decorum, so Herc found that a hopeful sign.

Pentecost made what he probably considered a concession. "No reports if they're not breaking regulations, but I think it's time to break it up."

"_Sir_!" Everyone looked at Lightcap. First Ranger or not, Herc knew she was no soldier and would never have made one. Probably too much heart for regular military, but Herc didn't consider it a failing; that heart had driven that head to humanity's first defeat of the kaiju. Since then, she'd gotten bolder. From what Herc had known of her two years ago, she would never have had the guts to challenge the superiors then. She was nervous now, but she didn't back down. "It's not necessary!"

The dancing was getting wilder, and Pentecost looked from her back to the feed. "I don't want this getting out of hand. Alcohol isn't banned on-base, but there are limits."

Herc spoke up. "They're not drunk, Marshall. I've seen enough base parties get out of hand." Considering Scott had had no interest in joining him for this trip, and they both knew why, a genuinely out of hand party might well be going on somewhere back in Sydney. Herc knew well what a problem situation looked like. "This isn't one."

"They're _happy_," said Lightcap, sounding exasperated. "Our finalists are all on the brink of being Ranger Ready, and they know it. They've worked very hard, met every demand we've put on them. It's almost Christmas, there's no movement in the Breach, and everyone at that party is off duty." She took a step forward, her voice entreating. "Let them dance!"

Pentecost eyed her, not liking his call being questioned at all, even less in front of so many visitors. But most of said visitors were giving him looks like they were in Lightcap's corner. He looked again at the party scene.

The birthday boy was in the center of a mass of gyrating bodies. There were quite a few women around him, but Herc couldn't even see much twerking going on, just men and women surrendering to music and motion all with the same crazed, energetic grins and shouts of joy. _Every kid should have a moment like this. _He wondered if Chuck ever would. Like so many attack survivors, he was wary at best around his peers, not that he saw many of them. The closest he'd come to being carefree were when he had the chance to run around outside with his puppy. _And he's got the notion of being a Ranger. It might not bother me so much if his class could end the term like this. _

One of the American generals shook his head, but he was smiling. "My wife gave me a bumper sticker for the car we keep at our daughter's house. It says ,'It's not that I'm old, your music really does suck.'" Nearly everyone chuckled.

"Likes her pop music, your daughter?" Herc asked.

"Oh, yes. She's twenty. Back before K-Day, in high school, it was all One Direction, all the time. The things we tolerate for our teenagers."

"My boy is thirteen," said Herc. "Not quite into the music scene yet."

"Give him time, Hansen," warned one of the other Aussies. "So, where's our up and coming team in that lot?"

Pentecost shook his head once more, but turned towards one of the other screens and made no more mention of calling in MPs or putting anyone on report. Grinning, Lightcap muted the pop music and scanned the group, then pointed. "There they are. Susanti Hassan," (the one dancing next to Vic Tunari, who was playing DJ), "and Devi Hassan in the conga line." Pentecost face-palmed, and several of the visitors snorted and grinned. "Sisters, ages twenty-four and twenty-six."

Pentecost pulled up their biographical stats. "First generation. The parents immigrated from Indonesia shortly after marrying and naturalized after the first daughter was born. They live in Brisbane, identify as Muslim. The father teaches at Queensland University of Technology - computer science, and both have degrees from there. Environmental science for the older, information technology for the younger."

"Damn. I'm almost sorry those two are Ranger Ready; we could use them in R&D," mused one of the Americans.

"There's plenty of science undergrads out there, sir," said Lightcap with a smile. "And not enough drift compatible people with the physical and mental stamina to handle a Jaeger."

"No arguments here, Dr. Lightcap. We've got two more teams coming out of this class?"

"We do, including our birthday boy," she informed him slyly. "They're our front runners - well, they are!" she protested, seeing Pentecost's irritated look.

"I hope to God that birthday boy's the younger one," muttered Herc.

"Don't worry, he is. Today is his eighteenth. Raleigh Becket. His brother Yancy is twenty-one." She took pity on Pentecost and turned the Jaeger Bay camera feed off and brought up the candidate biography pages with their lines of statistics and neutral headshots instead.

They went over the Beckets' information with the Americans, and reviewed the third pair of candidates, also American. As Pentecost went on with the brass about future deployment and coverage, Herc couldn't resist peering over Lightcap's shoulder at one of her small screens, where she was watching the party again.

Four active Rangers and six future Rangers were leading the Electric Slide. Herc grinned, and she winked at him. "Nice to know we haven't forgotten to have fun," he murmured.

"My thought exactly. You could go down there, you know. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to meet you."

"Nah, I won't crash their party. It'll keep."

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming Soon:_**_The visitors to Anchorage thought that party was pretty funny, but Stacker Pentecost Is Not Amused. Uh-oh! But just when our Marshall's hard philosophy on life seems etched in stone, a chance encounter between his adoptive daughter and a Ranger team just might change his outlook. Mako Mori is in the house in __**Chapter Eleven: Graduation Day**__!_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

** Original Character Guide **

Devi and Susanti Hassan - First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24. One of three remaining candidate teams (including the Beckets) in this Academy class.

** Familiar Faces **

Kennedy LaRue and Stephanie Lanphier - childhood friends from Seattle, age 18, former high school athletes and cheerleaders. (If you don't know more than that, well, wait and see!) One of three remaining teams including the Beckets in contention to become Rangers, they developed a romantic relationship after drift training began.

Dr. Caitlin Lightcap - age 30ish, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, inventor of the pons neural bridge and co-pilot of Brawler Yukon until its destruction. Retired from piloting to supervise pons training and drift sync testing at the Jaeger Academy. Now married to her co-pilot, Sergio D'onofrio.

Captain Sergio D'onofrio - age 30ish, test pilot and then co-pilot of Brawler Yukon,until its destruction, and moved on to a training position at the Jaeger Academy. (He was a Lieutenant in Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero - I'm assuming he got promoted. He and Caitlin Lightcap fell in love, and Stacker Pentecost referred to them as "the D'onofrios" a year later.)

Vic and Gunnar Tunari - brothers, successor pilots of Coyote Tango. In this fic, they are Americans of Bolivian ancestry, late 20s, sons of a US Marine who lived for several years in Okinawa, hence their being assigned to a Japanese Jaeger. They graduated Class 2016-A of the Jaeger Academy directly before the current class.

Secretary General Dustin Krieger - Secretary General of the PPDC, immediate superior of Stacker Pentecost. PPDC liaison to the UN.

Scott Hansen - Herc Hansen's younger brother and co-pilot of Lucky Seven, their first Jaeger. This fic assumes Lucky Seven was a Mark I, though canon doesn't make it clear.


	11. Graduation Day

_**A/N:**__ Thank you all once again for all the wonderful reviews! Please keep 'em coming!_

_**Canon Notes:**__ The novel states that the Beckets named their Jaeger, but I'm not going with that. In my fanon, she was named by the engineers who built her. According to Travis Beacham, Mako's birthday is January 2005, which meant she was eleven when Onibaba attacked. __Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero__ tells us that Marshall Pentecost spent about six months as commanding officer of the Academy before departing with Mako for Lima_.

**Chapter Eleven: Graduation Day**

_Jaeger Academy, Class 2016-B, Term 3…_

_December 24, 2016…_

Stacker Pentecost was not amused. It was just as well that he and Mako were departing for Lima, or an unpleasant confrontation might have ensued with the D'onofrios.

Lightcap had far overstepped her authority and questioned his in front of his superiors and colleagues - and knew damn well by now where the boundaries lay. She'd received considerable leeway in the Jaeger Program, out of recognition for her service and her civilian background... but now Stacker suspected that it had all been too much.

She had no business interfering with discipline of other Rangers or in the rules of conduct at Academy and Shatterdome. If _all _of the commanding officers didn't make that clear to her soon, they were going to have a serious problem.

Stacker was not heartless, nor was he blind to the need of everyone to loosen up, even during periods of high alert. But there were plenty of ways to loosen up without gamboling around Jaeger bays to blaring music or making multi-billion-dollar equipment move in any way not essential to its operation. Troops pulling stunts in their vehicles had cost lives in multiple militaries in the past, and it should not be tolerated with Jaegers.

He knew Lightcap had no intention of ever treating candidates or Rangers with the detachment that other superiors did. For the most part, he could tolerate that. Her gentleness during pons training had its uses, so he had allowed it. The Psych Analysts also backed it. Candidates and Rangers needed to trust the operators of the all-important neural bridge, and she had a calming effect on all of them at a time of extreme stress and confusion.

But the Rangers were not her children, and Stacker was beginning to fear that she was laboring under that delusion. That needed to change. No good would come of that kind of attachment in the Corps - her indulgence of the Jaeger Bay antics was only the first warning sign.

But that was in the hands of Anchorage's incoming Marshall, Vincent Gagnon. Stacker approved of the assignment; the man had plenty of command experience in Canada and had played a major role in establishing the zones of protection for the northern Shatterdomes. Stacker wasn't sure what sort of recreation he permitted in his ranks, but hoped he would keep them under control.

He gave a detailed closing report to Gagnon, including his assessment of the three remaining pairs of candidates. "All three have met the standards for Ranger Ready status. I have some reservations as to each team, but they are outweighed by those teams' abilities."

"What are your reservations?" Gagnon asked.

"I urge caution with Lanphier and LaRue. Their romantic involvement isn't a hindrance, but it's a new relationship brought on at least in part by the drift. Overall, they are the youngest and physically weakest team, and have had the most intense stress reactions to combat and casualties. The Hassans are the oldest team, by far the most mature and dedicated, but have difficulty with fast adaptation in combat simulation."

"And the Beckets?" Gagnon smiled. Having been among the visitors the night of the party, he knew just how displeased Stacker was about how that had gone.

Stacker refused to be drawn, and replied, "They have the high score in nearly every objective evaluation and most of the subjective ones. They're quick learners, in peak physical condition, and have developed top rate skill in every area of piloting. They have a powerful bond that has already withstood some emotional tests. I recommend them with few reservations, except to caution that they're immature, often disrespectful of authority and protocol, and undisciplined. They're a handful."

Now Gagnon was smirking. "In other words, they are very much like the Gages, the Tunaris, and many of the other most promising teams. Perhaps we should consider that a good sign."

"I leave that to your judgement, Marshall." _And on your head be it. _"The Gages and Tunaris could do with some additional discipline themselves."

The older man shook his head. "You weren't always so rigid in your thinking, Stacker Pentecost. Really, off the record, what changed?"

_Do you really want to have this conversation? _"We were attacked by alien monsters that have already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and left multiple cities in ruins. Even with the Jaegers, we've had close calls." The world had only turned uglier and more dangerous since K-Day. Why was it that even marshalls, generals, and admirals seemed to be going soft? "This Program and its members need to stay focused. Do you really approve of flouting the protocols that we both serve?"

"Flouting implies the rules were being broken. As Dr. Lightcap observed, they weren't. If I catch anyone under my command violating the code of conduct or slacking on their duties, I'll have their heads. But there's no rule against laughing. _Or _dancing." Gagnon eyed him. "I hope you're not so inflexible with your daughter."

That was a low shot, and so out of line that for a moment, Stacker was speechless. Not many people knew about Mako - and everyone who did knew who she was and what the kaiju had taken from her. "She is in no way relevant to this conversation, sir, and I question your judgment in making her part of it."

"My apologies!" The man was practically laughing at him.

"And as Dr. Lightcap also seems to have forgotten, Rangers are _not_ children."

"No, they're not. They're human. They're soldiers, and they're on the front lines. Some of them are going to die, and our job isn't only to prepare them for that. Many militaries neglect the mental health of their soldiers. I hope some of us have learned better. If dancing on their birthday when they're off duty lets them remember everything that makes this world worth fighting for, I endorse and approve it." Gagnon stood. "Have a safe journey, Marshall."

Well, that conversation had gone swimmingly. Exasperated, Stacker turned in his final paperwork and went back to quarters to collect Mako and their belongings for the transfer to Lima.

She was solemn, as always. Gagnon had been a bastard for bringing her up. If Stacker were a less disciplined man, he'd have shot back with the point that Mako Mori neither danced nor smiled because of what she'd witnessed in Tokyo - even _with_ the aid of a Jaeger.

He'd rarely taken her outside their quarters; it was very cold out, and large groups of people made her nervous. Earlier in the autumn, they'd gone out to see the Northern Lights, which she'd watched for hours, but she didn't like being outside during the day.

He'd hired a civilian child therapist who would actually travel with them to Lima, and dutifully obeyed the woman's instructions on how to help her heal. Mako loved to read, and once she had a good command of English (which at this rate, she would within a year), he would enroll her in a regular school. But for now, she was content with remote tutoring and staying inside.

They got a few double-takes on their way to the airstrip. Most of the Academy staff didn't have the faintest idea that he had a child in his care. He wasn't holding her hand, but somehow, everyone they passed seemed to sense that the little girl was his, and not Dr. Schneider's.

The only time she stirred from his side was when an over-enthusiastic airman came jogging after them. "Sir? Marshall!"

Startled, Mako jumped behind Stacker, and the young man caught himself even before Stacker had to call him to order. "_It's all right_," he murmured to her in Japanese, and turned to their pursuer. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry, sir. The flight's delayed; there's a problem with the de-icing."

"In Anchorage?" murmured Schneider in amusement.

"The plane is from Lima," the airman pointed out. He had a tablet with flight data on it, so Stacker assumed there were alternatives available.

Mako stood quietly next to Dr. Schneider, having gotten over her fright, but then her stomach rumbled so loudly that Stacker heard it several paces away. She had a habit of not telling them she was hungry; usually they were better at anticipating when she needed to eat.

The airman grinned, then quickly straightened his face, but Stacker turned to Dr. Schneider and said in Japanese, "_Why don't you take Mako to the mess hall. There shouldn't be anyone there at this time of day. I'll join you shortly_."

* * *

><p>There wasn't anyone in the mess hall at this time of day. Most of the non-Ranger population still had mandatory training depending on what field of J-Tech and K-Science they worked in. The newbies were all either in the sims or logging time in Brawler. The Gages were doing test exercises on Romeo post-refit.<p>

Vic and Gunnar were bored. Coyote was still in the shop, and it was way too damn cold to do anything outdoors by choice. So, they wound up unrolling the DDR dance pad in the mess hall for their preferred form of exercise. The staff were used to them playing music during off-hours by now, and didn't hesitate to give obnoxious commentary on their footwork and/or choice of music.

"Why the Marshalls thought that thing should be allowed on-base is beyond me," one of the cooks grumped playfully.

"This is a legit gauge of drift compatibility!" Gunnar retorted.

"I guess it can gauge that neither one of you've got any rhythm!"

They bared their teeth at her and picked the perkiest, cutesiest J-pop song available for their next number, getting groans of protest from the other few staff on duty. "Blame Yolanda!"

Yolanda was fleeing with her hands over her ears when the doors opened, and a blonde woman shepherded a little Asian girl into the mess hall. Vic and Gunnar exchanged surprised looks, but turned the music down and turned their attention to the dance pad. A few of the base personnel had kids, although they didn't recognize either visitor. With Pentecost turning over Anchorage to Gagnon, there were probably new people arriving.

The blonde woman translated Yolanda's questions to the little girl into Japanese, but she didn't reply except to nod or shake her head. Out of the corner of their eyes, they could see her staying at her chaperone's hip, but then she tilted her head curiously and stepped away, attention drawn to the music and the dancers. If she was Japanese, she might well recognize the band. The brothers exchanged grins and kept dancing.

This wouldn't be the first confused stare they got; a pair of Latino guys rocking out to J-pop wasn't something you saw every day. (And contrary to Yolanda's teasing, the Tunaris were good dancers, and knew it.)

When the song ended, they sketched a bow to their young audience, and the girl smiled shyly. The staff even applauded, but she didn't join in. Hint taken; a lot of kids related to PPDC personnel had some trauma background. They directed their "announcements" to the whole room. "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, we're your entertainment today, and we do take requests! We sing, we dance, we do tricks!"

Of course, Yolanda wanted them to do Gangnam Style. Rather than point out that Psy was Korean, not Japanese, they obeyed, hamming it up as much as possible, and soon ended up with a cook and a janitor as their chorus line. The show was rewarded with a little girl's helpless giggling, and her escort's approving smile.

When they finished, Vic raised an eyebrow at the woman, getting a small nod, and asked their spectator in Japanese, "_What's your name?_"

She blinked, as did her chaperone. She gave no response, but a more flirtatious duck of the head. The woman asked the Tunaris, "_You speak Japanese?_"

"We lived in Okinawa for nine years," Vic explained. "Our Dad was in the Marines. Our Japanese is better than our Spanish."

"Mm." She raised her eyebrows at the little girl, who just ducked again and shook her head, but she was still smiling. "_Well, maybe she'll tell you her name if you dance for her again_."

"_Tough customer, huh? Wanna see what we got?_"

It was quite the scene that Marshall Pentecost walked in on: two grown-ass Bolivian-American men dancing their hearts out to _PonPonPon_, getting whoops of encouragement from the mess hall staff, all for the entertainment of one tiny kid, who was giggling and clapping along.

At first, Vic and Gunnar assumed that the thunderstruck look on the Marshall's face was just disbelief at the indignity of his Rangers… until they both noticed he wasn't looking at them.

He was looking at the girl.

As the song ended, the girl's sitter turned to greet the Marshall, and the little one called cheerfully, "Sensei!" and scampered back to him, chattering in Japanese.

Usually, Vic and Gunnar used Japanese as their go-to "be rude and talk in front of people" language. Since that obviously wouldn't work in this crowd, Vic switched to Spanish, and muttered in his brother's ear, "_Oh my god, I knew she looked familiar. It's the girl with the red shoe._"

Tokyo's Daughter. The little girl standing in the rubble of Onibaba's duel with Coyote – piloted by Stacker Pentecost – staring up at the Jaeger with her red shoe in her hand. And now, here she was, calling Pentecost _Sensei. _The brothers quickly schooled the shock from their own faces and made cautious, polite small talk with Yolanda and the staff, who had also sensed the sudden rise in tension.

Pentecost was reserved as always, even with a child, but there was an unmistakable gentleness about him – and something intense in his eyes as he looked from her to them. In the background, Yolanda was shooing the rest of the staff into the kitchen. She might give Rangers hell, but she knew when to make a discreet exit.

Once they no longer had an audience, the blonde woman straightened and approached them. "I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself. I'm Dr. Tanja Schneider." From the almost-imperceptible gesture she made, they gathered that the little girl was her patient. After what that kid had seen, it wasn't surprising.

They shook hands, trying not to stare too obviously past her. "Vic and Gunnar Tunari."

Pentecost stood, the girl's hand in his, and led her towards them. Schneider smiled and said in Japanese, "_Shall we tell them your name now?_"

With a still-shy but eager grin, the girl nodded, and Pentecost said, "_Vic and Gunnar, this is Mako Mori. Mako, Vic and Gunnar are Jaeger pilots._"

Most of the time, Rangers were all too happy to be introduced that way. But at this moment, they were both a little sorry to be anyone other than "Vic and Gunnar who dance like fools to J-pop for your amusement."

Mako's eyes went wide, and her smile vanished. Vic and Gunnar held their breath, hoping the horrors she'd lived through wouldn't come surging back, but while she was awestruck, she didn't seem scared.

Instead, she let go of Pentecost's hand and bowed to them.

They weren't exactly ghost drifting, but both knew the same thought was in both their heads: _Oh, shit, do not let me burst into tears. _

Schneider put in helpfully, "_They were keeping us company while we waited_."

"_So I saw. Our flight is delayed by the weather, so we'll go back to quarters_," Pentecost told his charge. He looked at Vic and Gunnar and said in a low voice, "Thank you."

"Our pleasure, sir," said Gunnar, giving Mako a smile. Her shy smile in return was the entire holiday season as Pentecost and Schneider led her back out of the mess hall.

Vic sat down on the floor. "We should've offered to make Coyote dance for her."

"Nah," Gunnar mused, sitting down next to him. "That little girl's seen Coyote at her best. Nothing we do could possibly impress her." He smiled at his brother. "And rightly so."

"Amen."

* * *

><p>Mako fell asleep in short order, worn out. Stacker and Dr. Schneider slipped back into his living area. She considered him, then pointed out, "Setbacks can be unexpected, but so can breakthroughs. Today was a good day."<p>

"It was." _But have I been doing well by her? Should I have been trying to make her laugh before today? _"Your duties here are confined to Mako's recovery," he said slowly. "But naturally that includes addressing any… shortcomings of mine that could hinder it."

Schneider put down her bag and sat down. "I'm well aware of that, and I assure you, that if I noticed any shortcomings, I wouldn't hesitate to say so."

"Oh?" Did he dare consider that reassuring? Or in the alternative, did he dare let himself believe that all his own losses pressing down on his mind wouldn't color his treatment of Mako?

"You are the best judge of your own fitness, Mr. Pentecost," she said, dropping title altogether as she always did when they spoke solely of his role as father. "Every parent should be a harsh self-critic, but there are limits to all criticism. In this day and age, I can safely say that you don't need to remind anyone – let alone Mako – that the world is a hard place. Nor yourself. And if you question your own ability to give her a happy home, you should address that yourself." She raised her eyebrows. "Your Rangers are all required to undergo regular counseling, aren't they?"

Stacker nodded. "For the sake of aiding their drift, yes."

"Parenting is its own sort of drift. Instinct and hope and experience and the desire for understanding. In that respect, maybe you should address what you carry into it, _especially_ if it concerns you." She stood again and picked up her bag. "That's not my job, of course, but you have no lack of resources available. Do page me if Mako has any difficulty tonight."

She let herself out, and Stacker studied the empty table for a long time.

He stirred from his musings when his screen signaled an assembly call for the Academy – both the prospective Rangers and their former classmates, now moved on to the other disciplines. On a split-second impulse, he called Schneider back to stay in his quarters in case Mako woke up, then headed for Marshall Gagnon's office. As he left, he saw Schneider's knowing smile. She might be billed as a child psychologist, but she had a very accurate read of most adults.

Gagnon made no mention of their earlier disagreement. "I saw that your flight was canceled. With luck, the weather will clear tomorrow."

"I'd hoped to be down there before Christmas, but we're still ahead of schedule," he said neutrally. "I assume by the assembly call that you've made your final decisions?"

"I have." Gagnon held out the tablet, which contained no surprises.

Stacker nodded. "May I join you for the announcement?"

It was an about-face, but Gagnon had the decency not to remark on it. "Of course. This is your class, after all. Would you care to do the honors?"

"Thank you."

Sixty candidates had made the first cut of Class 2016-B. Forty-nine remained at the Academy in some capacity, be it placement in Jaeger support crews or training in some other area of the PPDC's mission. Six of those forty-nine were prospective Rangers. Although they hadn't been officially summoned, all of the current and former Rangers presently at Kodiak Island appeared in the assembly hall: the Gages, the Tunaris, and the D'onofrios, along with a small army of their support staff.

Stacker had previously been adamant that the Academy should not have a "graduation ceremony." This was a life-and-death situation, not a college campus, he had said (thinking the Rangers had enough sources of ego-inflation as it was.) But this unofficial tradition had only grown since the first batch of pilots had been assigned their mechs.

He kept his speech brief… but found the giddy atmosphere a little less frustrating than before. "Candidates. Upon review of your training performance and test results, the Academy has reached its decision."

Six pairs of eyes were locked on him with rapt attention; six young men and women of different ages and walks of life who'd risen to every challenge that Stacker and the instructors could conceive to throw at them. Behind them, six experienced Rangers, as different as the candidates, who'd undergone the same trials. Not always with the same formality and structure, but with the same result.

"Your three teams have been approved by the Academy senior officers and the PPDC for assignment as pilots of the Jaeger Program." There was a collective, soft intake of breath. "You are all declared Ranger Ready."

Unsurprisingly, the youngest ones showed the strongest reaction. Raleigh Becket, Stephanie Lanphier, and Kennedy LaRue looked as if they might burst from the elation. The Hassans maintained impressive dignity, but shifted their weight closer together. Yancy Becket kept up his considerable self-restraint and held his composed, neutral expression even as his younger brother beamed.

Stacker stepped aside and let Gagnon take the final honor. "Jaeger Academy, Class 2016-B, congratulations. Dismissed."

The explosion of applause didn't bother Stacker as it once had. Even the whoops and whistles from the more exuberant souls was mostly amusing, though he took care not to show it.

Jasper Schoenfeld had slipped in with a few of his senior techs to watch the action, and Stacker joined him and Gagnon. "The first of _our _class is ready for assignment, Marshalls," Schoenfeld murmured. "Really, whenever you're ready."

Gagnon held out his tablet and tapped the name of the chosen team lightly. "No surprises here, I assume?"

"Nope. I've seen the sim scores and test results. Engineering approves." Schoenfeld smiled. "It's Christmas Eve, you know."

Stacker nodded and raised his eyebrows at Gagnon. This time, Gagnon definitely smirked at him. "Beckets." The newly-minted Rangers slipped quickly out of the crowd of milling well-wishers. "With us, please."

Both young men caught sight of Schoenfeld and worked out where this was going. Raleigh Becket's eyes widened comically, and even his stoic brother went a little pale. As the group of them departed the conference hall, Stacker heard Tendo Choi whisper, "This is it!"

As they reached the Assembly Building, Schoenfeld took the lead. "Now that all the official stamps are in place, the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed, an introduction is in order."

He led the way into the testing bay that was almost identical to the launch bays of the Shatterdome – the stage for the final steps in preparing a new mech for its launch. Both Beckets' caught their breath. Schoenfeld stepped in front of them, sweeping out his arm as if making a grand introduction. "Raleigh and Yancy Becket, meet Gipsy Danger."

Now their expressions were identical, their faces slack and eyes wide with awe as they took in the sight. Schoenfeld went on, knowing they couldn't speak. "Nuclear vortex turbine core in the central torso with sixty feet of shielding for the conn-pod. I-19 plasma particle dispersal cannons on each arm, elbow rocket launchers and rear turbo jets. Liquid circuitry neural pathways, fully detachable conn-pod head, rotates three-hundred-sixty degrees. She's the first of the Mark IIIs, flying the American flag. And she's yours."

The decal of a buxom brunette astride a bomb bespoke the origin of her name. The newly-assigned pilots were no longer aware of any presence in the room except the one towering over the layers of walkways and harnesses.

"Yance?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm in love."

"Me too."

Stacker Pentecost let himself smile. He knew they wouldn't notice.

To be continued...

_**Coming Soon:**__ Our heroes celebrate graduation, Christmas, and a hopeful future for the Jaeger Program. Sadly, neither the war nor life are completely escapable even during the holidays. Goodbyes must be said as duty calls for some of their friends, and Yancy is forced to make a painful declaration in __**Chapter Twelve: If Only In My Dreams**__**!**_

**PLEASE remember to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Marshall Vincent Gagnon - newly-appointed commanding officer of the Jaeger Academy and Anchorage Shatterdome, successor to Marshall Pentecost. Canadian Air Force Marshall, around age 50.

Dr. Tanja Schneider - child psychologist, German, mid-40s, hired by Marshall Pentecost to travel with them and treat Mako's trauma.

Devi and Susanti Hassan - First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24. One of three teams including the Beckets to graduate Class 2016-B and become Jaeger pilots.

**Familiar Faces**

Vic and Gunnar Tunari - brothers, successor pilots of Coyote Tango. In this fic, they are Americans of Bolivian ancestry, late 20s, sons of a US Marine who lived for several years in Okinawa, hence their being assigned to a Japanese Jaeger. They graduated Class 2016-A of the Jaeger Academy directly before the current class.

Dr. Caitlin Lightcap - age 30ish, from Pittsburgh, PA, inventor of the pons neural bridge and co-pilot of Brawler Yukon until its destruction. Retired from piloting to supervise pons training and drift sync testing at the Jaeger Academy. Now married to her co-pilot, Sergio D'onofrio.

Captain Sergio D'onofrio - age 30ish, test pilot and then co-pilot of Brawler Yukon,until its destruction, and moved on to a training position at the Jaeger Academy. (He was a Lieutenant in Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero - I'm assuming he got promoted. He and Caitlin Lightcap fell in love, and Stacker Pentecost referred to them as "the D'onofrios" a year later.)

Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld - engineer who created and designed the first Jaegers, now head of Jaeger Engineering in the PPDC. Had an affair with Caitlin Lightcap when she was his graduate student and he was married, which they resumed after his divorce while they were working on the Jaeger project. Caitlin ended the relationship after drifting and falling in love with the test pilot, Sergio D'onofrio.

Kennedy LaRue and Stephanie Lanphier - childhood friends from Seattle, age 18, former high school athletes and cheerleaders. Developed a romantic relationship at the Academy partly as a result of drifting together. One of three teams (including the Beckets) to graduate Class 2016-B and become Jaeger pilots.


	12. If Only In My Dreams

_**Author's Notes:**__ A little tidbit (or disclaimer) on the tone in parts of this chapter - writing from the POV of a teenaged boy sometimes necessitates holding my nose. Raleigh (and Yancy) are reasonably fair-minded lads who try to be good to everyone, but their perspective can sometimes be arrogant and immature, especially when it comes to women and minorities_.

_**Canon Note:** Yankee Star, Silver Lion, Tidal Dragon are original Jaeger characters, the Mark IIs for the United States, China, and Japan_. _At this stage in the story, four Shatterdomes have opened with four more still in progress. _ _The discussion between the graduates and Dr. Schoenfeld in this chapter explains my theory on the "gender" of Jaegers. _

**Chapter Twelve: If Only In My Dreams**

_Jaeger Academy, Class 2016-B, Graduation Day…_

_December 24, 2016…_

Class 2016-B could barely get a word out of the Beckets for the rest of the night. Stephanie, Kennedy, and the Hassans hid what disappointment they felt, congratulating their fellow Rangers and rejoicing that while they wouldn't be the first of the class assigned a mech, they now knew it would follow.

"It can wait," said Kennedy. "We weren't sure we'd make Ranger Ready. If this is the only Mark III that goes to the US, we'll wait for the Mark IVs."

"Are there any teams from the previous classes that haven't been placed yet? You two should be first in line," Tendo pointed out.

Captain D'onofrio spun a chair around and sat backwards on it. "There's a lot of political and strategic maneuvering going on over who gets each Jaeger - what country and where the pilots should come from. We've got Shatterdomes in progress in Sydney, LA, and Panama, and another in Japan. The goal is to try to get at least two Jaegers to every Shatterdome as soon as they're opened."

"We've got Romeo Blue and Yankee Star," Tendo mused, counting on his fingers. "And Brawler, really - no reason Big Daddy can't get back into it if he needs to." Their group snickered as D'onofrio preened. "China's got Horizon Brave and Silver Lion, Japan's got Tacit Ronan and Tidal Dragon... is Coyote Tango staying with them?"

"We are," confirmed Vic Tunari, scooting his own chair closer. "As soon as she's done with her refit, we're going back to Tokyo. Once Nagasaki's open, one of us will end up there. Japan's a little less rigid on the nationalism stuff, close to the Breach as they are. As long as we can speak the language and spent some time, they're glad to have us."

D'onofrio lowered his voice, and everyone leaned in, sensing juicy gossip was coming. "Not every national government is so flexible."

"Well, it's understandable to a point," Cady Spencer admitted. "If the Jaeger's flying their flag, protecting their people, they want to feel that the guys - or girls - in the conn-pod understand their mission in their heart."

"True. In most cases, we can manage to recruit some drift compatible people. But one of our Mark IIIs is probably going to fly the Mexican flag, and they are giving us hell over pilot candidates. Only natural-born Mexican citizens will do. We've got 'till late 2017 to find them and place them, but the Western Hemisphere Marshalls are tearing their hair out."

"So..." Kennedy bit her lip and looked at the Hassans. "Can we ask what country gets the next one? Do we know?"

D'onofrio feigned shiftiness, and they all snickered. "Well, the Engineers would have my head if I gave away names - it's bad luck, they say. And it could change. Negotiations are still in progress. But so far, the next Mark III looks like it will be China's - he's under assembly in Hong Kong, not here. The third is being built in Brisbane for Australia. There's also backing coming in from the Philippines and Indonesia for that one." He winked at the Hassans, who both got very still and quiet. "So, yeah, we have a team in mind for that crew already. Work in progress."

Indra Hassan leaned forward and slung an arm around each of his cousins' shoulders, giving them a squeeze. "I am taking the mission control training for LOCCENT assignment."

"Us too," said Tendo, gesturing to himself and Cady.

"Excellent. Governments like to see their own people on support as well. As for our other American team," Sergio grinned at Kennedy and Stephanie. "At least one, possibly two of the Mark IVs are slated for the US, to make sure we're covered in both of our Shatterdomes when they open."

"How far along are the Mark IVs?" asked Stephanie softly.

"The first two are projected to be pilot-ready by summer. We're aiming for 2018 launch for the line. So keep yourselves in shape!" he admonished. The pair nodded vigorously.

* * *

><p>Nobody assumed the kaiju would give them a Christmas truce, so all regular duties were still assigned. Even so, there was sappy holiday music playing in every room where it was permitted (and in plenty of rooms that it wasn't), the mess hall served turkey and cranberry sauce. There was also Chinese food for those who weren't interested, which many people decided was actually better than the turkey anyway, and there were lots of little presents being exchanged.<p>

For their daily turn in the simulator, Raleigh and Yancy were presented with a new "virtual Jaeger" program whose systems needed to be learned: their own. Gipsy Danger.

"Merry Christmas!" Dr. Lightcap crowed as the techs applauded and the Beckets sputtered in the pod rig.

Raleigh was impatient with having to go through all the same boring drills and test simulations before getting to even attempt a combat sim, let alone actually pilot Gipsy in real life. "Hey, show some respect for a lady. Do you always go straight to third base the minute you meet?" Vic Tunari demanded.

There were raunchy noises in the lab, and to his right, Yancy snorted. "He's got you there, kiddo. Come on, let's earn this so we can show her a good time when we take her out."

They had a lot of spectators even in the non-combat sims. Everybody wanted to scope out the new Mark III's abilities. "Damn, she's gonna be _fast_," breathed Trevin Gage. "Even in the water. Some legs on her."

"Are those plasma cannons going to function in full immersion?" Lea Franklin wondered.

"Their range'll be less, but they'll still pack a punch," Dr. Schoenfeld told her. "The same goes for her propulsion rockets."

He and the engineers finally gave the go-ahead for the rest of the Corps personnel to get a look at their newest Jaeger, and Raleigh and Yancy led their entire class to the Assembly Building. It was all reverent lowered voices in the Bay, unable to get closer than just standing on the concrete beneath her, staring up.

"She's pretty, guys."

"She is that."

"How come some of the Jaegers are 'he'? Shouldn't they all be 'she'?"

"Probably, but I didn't really think of it as shipbuilding when we started," said Dr. Schoenfeld. "Brawler was a 'he,' so was Romeo. We started going by the names. They're humanoid mechs, after all, so why not?"

"Who gave her the name?" asked Lea.

"One of our senior R&D designers. He likes his history; he found that pinup at an antiques faire when we were sketching out the blueprints for the Mark IIIs. We had to wheedle the Marshalls to let us put the picture on her; some of them thought it was inappropriate." Schoenfeld snorted. "It gives her character. And you'll get the chance to design and redesign systems like hers if you take our offer!"

He and his team were wooing several former members of class 2016-B, and none more ferociously than Lea Franklin. But she kept telling them she hadn't made up her mind; a large number of the class was eagerly waiting to sign on train with Gipsy's support crew. "I'm thinking I might like to stay with my class," she explained.

From the way her eyes strayed to Yancy, Raleigh knew that it wasn't the rest of the class she wanted to stay with.

But a few days later, as they finished pre-testing and were finally cleared to start combat sims with Gipsy as their virtual mech, Yancy's side of the drift kept flickering with the same memory: him talking to Lea in the Kwoon. They managed not to chase that rabbit, but it was a near thing.

Raleigh was frustrated; he did _not_ want to get killed in their first combat sim for their own Jaeger. Granted, there were very few pilots who didn't get beaten in their first try fighting with a new mech in the simulator, but he felt a superstition about it. Worse yet, they were bringing Virtual Gipsy against Belobog, an imaginary kaiju conceived by some truly sadistic K-Science goons - the one who'd kicked their asses when they were distracted by the mess with Naomi.

_And now we're distracted by another girl. Damn it, Yance!_

"Okay, seriously - what's it about?" he hissed as they suited up for the combat sim. "You might as well tell me. You keep drifting into it, so I'm gonna find out."

Yancy sighed. "That was me giving Lea 'The Talk.'"

Raleigh frowned. "What?"

"You know. The 'it's not you, it's me,' talk, the 'I'm just not that into you,' talk. The 'I still want to be friends even though I know I'm about to make you cry' talk."

"Oh. OH!" Raleigh grimaced, but restrained himself from asking, _That's IT? That's what you're all angsty about? Jesus, man, it's not like you asked her to follow you around like a puppy!_ What was Yance supposed to do? Date her out of pity?

Sure, he felt sorry for Lea. Anybody with a heart in their chest would. And he'd had unrequited crushes over the years; it sucked, no question. It ached. He got that. But he'd had to turn girls down sometimes, just like girls had turned him down, and they always seemed to get so mad, like he owed them something. It tended to kill any sympathy he felt pretty quick.

"How'd she take it?" he finally asked.

"Like she took scrubbing out in Term Two. Gracious. Just made me feel like more of a jerk."

"You didn't ask her to like you, Yance."

Yancy shot him a withering look. "That doesn't mean I like hurting people either, kid. Try a little empathy now and then!" That stung, and Raleigh scowled at his feet, but Yancy relented. "Sorry. I'm in a bad mood. Devi Hassan thought I should tell her flat-out, and she was right, but it wasn't easy."

"We gonna be okay in the sim?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I've got it." His brother smirked faintly at him as they got into their drive suit mock-ups. "Just mix up Marvel and DC for me again if I start drifting."

"Deal."

This time, they kept it together. Keeping instinctive control of Gipsy's weapons and systems with a virtual kaiju harassing them wasn't easy. It definitely wasn't their cleanest run, but they did come out with a kill and with themselves and Gipsy mostly undamaged.

As they were powering down, going through the motions of retrieval and return to base, the slacking-off adrenaline brought the images in the drift a little more to the forefront.

_Yancy had pulled Lea aside after evening exercises. Damn, she was such a kid. "How come you're thinking about turning down Engineering R&D?"_

_She was so much smarter than people assumed. So much older, really. He felt like an asshole. Her eyes brimmed; she knew where this was going. It took her a minute to muster it up, but finally she whispered, "I think you know."_

The images faded as the drift powered down, but Raleigh caught flashes of it.

"..._ If I did anything to lead you on... I'm sorry, I don't want to ruin your Christmas."_

_That got a little flash of annoyance. "I'm Jewish, Yancy," she pointed out, a little sour. But then she sighed and looked down again. "You didn't lead me on. I... it's okay. I understand. I'm a big girl, I'll get over it. You didn't - you were just you. Don't stop being you, okay?"_

She'd been sweet, Raleigh admitted as the handshake deactivated. Gracious. She'd barely even cried. Why weren't more girls like that? Or more people, he corrected himself.

He wasn't really sure why Yancy associated memories of Lea with memories of Jazmine so much. Lea looked almost nothing like Jazmine, and acted still less like her. But for some reason, Yancy seemed to superimpose Jazmine on the other girl in his mind. He hadn't told Lea that part, but it was certainly one of the reasons he'd never be able to get romantic with her.

_He had to tell 'em both something they didn't want to hear, _Raleigh finally realized. And there was the big difference.

Raleigh had seen the little gift box of Lush cosmetics - Jazmine's favorite - that must have stretched Yance's budget to send for Christmas. And he'd seen the box come back a few days after with "**_Return to Sender_**" scribbled on it in Jazmine's handwriting.

Ironic. Yance used to be the one who insisted to Raleigh, "She can only hurt you if you let her." Now he was laying himself out to her claws.

_Too bad Lea's really _not_ our sister. Maybe she and I would've gotten along better. Certainly more like Yancy deserves. _Maybe Raleigh could've been a better brother if he'd had a sister like that.

He felt a lot warmer towards Lea Franklin as New Year's approached, especially when she did end up taking J-Tech R&D's offer to follow their top-tier, fastest-track engineering degree that would probably have her building Jaegers of her own by the time she was twenty-one. Yancy had been forcing a smile as he applauded along with the others, nervous and uncomfortable, but she shot him a grin and a quick nod, an unmistakable message that there were no hard feelings.

Raleigh felt guilty then for his own attitude towards her. She'd never been anything but sweet to everyone. Raleigh had even less an excuse than Yance to make her into a sister-by-proxy.

* * *

><p>A big crowd of personnel left just before New Years for the Lima Shatterdome, including Marshall Pentecost. With them were Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald, the pair who hadn't made the third cut. "We're going to miss you," Janet told them as they said their goodbyes. "But some of our family is still with the allied forces in Panama, so we'll train with the Corps responders at Lima, then transfer when Panama Shatterdome opens."<p>

"Keep in touch, our Irish brethren," Tendo admonished them. "We'll send you a bunch of stupid green stuff for St. Patrick's day."

"Please, only Americans celebrate that, and if I hear any of you singing _Oh Danny Boy_, I'll sic a kaiju on you!" Brian groaned.

"Excellent - we'll have Vic and Gunnar organize an _a capella_ performance!" Cady crowed.

"Take those two with you, please!" Devi Hassan pleaded. "Just drop-kick them both out the window when you reach cruising altitude." Cady and Tendo feigned outrage as Raleigh and Yancy joined the chorus of approval.

Most of the crowd from the Southern climates headed indoors, but Raleigh and Yancy hung out with a few sterner souls until it was time for the plane to load up. "There's a huge group heading down there," Yancy mused. "Not just personnel - families too."

"Permanent staff can have their families on-base," Brian pointed out. "The usual military housing rules."

"Eh, got someone in mind?" Raleigh asked slyly.

Brian shook his head, good-natured. "My girl and me broke it off after K-Day. She was from the UK and went back home when NATO started moving everyone. You never know, though. There goes Pentecost," he added, seeing the tall Marshall among another group heading for the plane.

Janet was observing some of the families accompanying the personnel, and murmured, "Aww, did you see that little girl?"

"Hm?" Raleigh asked, looking in the direction she was gazing.

"With the blonde woman, the little Asian girl in the parka. One of the youngest kids I've seen around here."

Raleigh caught a quick glimpse of the pair, in a group of families a few paces behind Pentecost, but the little dark head above the furry coat was turned away from him. Two gangly boys in their early teens went running to catch up with the group, and he found himself grinning at Yancy. A page went out for the next group, and that was for Brian and Janet.

"Take care of yourselves," Yancy told them.

"You two, Rangers. I hope we'll see you again." Janet grinned easily. "I have a feeling we will." She leaned in and kissed each of them on the cheek, making Raleigh blush, and he hurriedly gave Brian a firm handshake.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon:**__ The Jaeger Academy Class 2016-B moves into new quarters as everyone prepares for life as PPDC officers. But first... it's New Year's Eve! Party in the Anchorage Shatterdome (again)! This one is hosted by the pilots of Coyote Tango, and everyone's invited in __**Chapter Thirteen: New Everything**__!_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Devi and Susanti Hassan - First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24. One of three teams including the Beckets to graduate Class 2016-B and become Jaeger pilots.

Indra Hassan - Devi and Susanti's cousin, age 37, from Jakarta, Indonesia. Failed second cut, but now training to be a LOCCENT officer with Tendo Choi and Cady Spencer.

Cady Spencer - mid-20s, Filipino-American from Portland, Oregon. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training. Now training as a LOCCENT technician along with Tendo Choi.

Lea Franklin - age 17, lived in San Jose, California. Sole survivor of K-Day out of her family because she was traveling abroad with a school group. Extremely gifted, but has intense social anxiety due to PTSD. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC for officer training.

Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald - First cousins, Irish nationals, mid-20s. One of four teams (including the Beckets) to survive the second cut, but failed to make the third cut.

**Familiar Faces**

Dr. Caitlin Lightcap - age 30ish, from Pittsburgh, PA, inventor of the pons neural bridge and co-pilot of Brawler Yukon until its destruction. Retired from piloting to supervise pons training and drift sync testing at the Jaeger Academy. Now married to her co-pilot, Sergio D'onofrio.

Captain Sergio D'onofrio - age 30ish, test pilot and then co-pilot of Brawler Yukon,until its destruction, and moved on to a training position at the Jaeger Academy. (He was a Lieutenant in Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero - I'm assuming he got promoted. He and Caitlin Lightcap fell in love, and Stacker Pentecost referred to them as "the D'onofrios" a year later.)

Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld - engineer who created and designed the first Jaegers, now head of Jaeger Engineering in the PPDC. Had an affair with Caitlin Lightcap when she was his graduate student and he was married, which they resumed after his divorce while they were working on the Jaeger project. Caitlin ended the relationship after drifting and falling in love with the test pilot, Sergio D'onofrio.


	13. New Everything

_**Author's Notes:** The song that the Tunaris parody is _My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark_ by Fall Out Boy, and _Hall of Fame_ is by The Script and Will I Am. No copyright infringement is intended! The gratuitous geek culture reference that Raleigh and Yancy parody during the toasts is from the sci-fi movie Serenity._

_**Canon Note:** In the movie, Marshall Pentecost referred to a Jaeger called Tango Tasmania, but Travis Beacham has since told us that since Jaeger call signs are not used more than once, that was not a correct Jaeger name (since it would've caused confusion with Coyote Tango.) So for purposes of this story, she is called Talon Tasmania, but nicknamed "Tango" because she was the first Jaeger whose pilots made her dance. Her pilots are OCs: Maria Lopez and Miguel Blanco, Argentine Air Force pilots who achieved drift compatibility through dancing. If anyone is interested, I'll post some tidbits to my Tumblr on my fanon details for the original Jaegers and/or their original pilots. Please let me know!_

**Chapter Thirteen: New Everything**

_PPDC Proving Grounds and Assembly Building, Kodiak Island, Alaska…_

_December 31, 2016…_

At Kodiak Island, everyone was getting their new living assignments in the personnel quarters. A few graduates of Class 2016-B were already being shuffled over to the new Shatterdome next to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage on the mainland. All the newly-minted Rangers were now residents of personnel housing that backed up to the Academy, the Proving Grounds, and the Assembly Buildings.

Everyone came sniffing around the Rangers' quarters, wanting to see if they were any bigger or better than what the rest of the population had. (They weren't.)

"Look at it. You guys are gonna be rock stars, and you still have bunk beds," huffed Tendo.

"You think even the married Rangers have bunk beds? Toss you for the bottom," said Raleigh, holding out a quarter.

"Tails," said Yancy. It landed heads-up, and he grumbled, "Figures."

"Hey, you get up a lot less than I do!" Raleigh protested. Sometimes he could swear that Yance insisted on flipping a coin because he didn't want to concede that on any given day, Raleigh had more energy than he did.

Yancy was among those who groaned the loudest when they saw how early even regular PPDC personnel had to get up. "If we have to keep on suffering through drills and workouts, so do you, Golden Boys," Tendo informed them.

So the routine wasn't all that different from the Academy. They were still up at the crack of dawn for mandatory exercise, then the Rangers had Jaeger Bushido drills. Everyone split up for their various trainings and exercises after that, and got together in the mess halls for lunch to trade stories and gossip about what was going on.

Marshall Gagnon was a little more laid back than Pentecost - a very little. "Do not make the mistake of thinking the cat's away," he told them. "I still follow the Code of Conduct, and expect you to adhere to it no less than you did under my predecessors. Outside of that, you can unwind as you see fit, but don't think you won't be called on the carpet for any behavior that casts this facility and its personnel in a bad light."

Even Marshall Pentecost probably wouldn't have found fault with how Raleigh and Yancy were spending most of their free time: wandering around Bay 04 of the Assembly Building looking for new vantage points on Gipsy Danger. The engineer doing most of the work on their conn-pod, Priya Katwal, was a NASA veteran in her fifties who'd helped build living modules on the International Space Station. She thought their lovesick ogling of her creation was cute. "There is nothing more adorable than googly-eyed Rangers," she snickered when her crew found Raleigh and Yancy on a catwalk above the pod.

Busted, they could only grin sheepishly. "I know, if she were a girl, we'd be stalking her," Raleigh admitted. "You can tell us to get lost if we're in the way." They'd already been warned by the Gages and the Tunaris: stay on the techs' good side!

"Oh, we will, _if_ you're in the way, but you're not. You can admire her." She even took them on a tour of the conn-pod-in-progress. "Rangers are a lot like astronauts," she told them. "Some of them are great to work with, some are a pain in the ass. So much of this stuff has to be custom-tailored for you guys. I'm glad you're not divas."

"To be fair, most of you aren't," added one of her assistants. "The Gages and the Tunaris are fun. A lot of the Chinese and Russians are kind of... all business, but they're polite. There are a few jerks."

"_Hansen,_" someone muttered, and a few elbows were thrown.

"Well, I try to be on good terms with the people building our Jaeger," Yancy said, and jerked his thumb at Raleigh. "And if he's ever a brat, just smack him one - you have permission."

"Nice!" There were hoots of approval as Raleigh gave Yancy his best stink-eye.

* * *

><p>The D'onofrios gave everyone a heads-up that Raleigh's birthday party had almost been broken up by Pentecost... but accepted the general invitation for a New Year's Eve party for everyone who was off-duty in Coyote's Tango's repair bay in the Assembly Building.<p>

"Gagnon's not as strict as Pentecost. As long as nobody gets wasted or posts YouTube videos of people getting naked, we're okay," the Gages concluded.

"Damn, that means the strip poker tourney is off," complained the Tunaris.

"You can't possibly top Raleigh's birthday party," Stephanie Lanphier told Vic and Gunnar as they were hauling music equipment.

"Challenge accepted, babe!"

They had a bitch of a time selling the Gages on their entertainment plan. Bruce and Trevin had great senses of humor that had only improved with drifting, but every now and then their old military sensibilities about dignity popped up.

"Come on! You guys have both sung karaoke before, I've seen you! You can both carry a tune, and it'll be better if it's all Rangers!" Vic and Gunnar insisted.

"But not in front of that many people! Make the Becket boys do it!"

"They're not initiated yet."

"Neither are you!"

They were at a stalemate until the day of the party. Then, word got around that Lightcap was in a funk after an argument with Schoenfeld.

The Corps gossip mobile roared to life. "She got on him about that cute little genius from 2016-B," someone reported. "Lea Franklin. Girl finally signed on to Engineering, and Lightcap got suspicious."

"Holy shit! Is she even legal?"

"No, she ain't, and you know Schoenfeld's reputation. They say he and Lightcap had a thing way back when she was a grad student, and everyone knows about them when they were building Brawler."

"But Lightcap would've been legal then."

"Yeah, but she got worried. And, _man_, Schoenfeld had a hernia! Techs could hear him yelling with all the speakers off. Something about 'yes, I might have been a jackass, but I'm not a pervert.' Then D'onofrio got in there and started yelling at _him_, and the MPs were banging on the door before anyone got hit. Last I heard, Marshall Gagnon was having a chat with Schoenfeld."

"Huh. Schoenfeld's kind of sleazy, but I didn't think he was _that_ sleazy."

When the gossip got around to the Beckets, Yancy bristled. "It won't suddenly become un-sleazy the minute she turns eighteen. I hadn't thought about that, but if that's what he's after, I hope somebody sets him straight."

Vic and Gunnar had no doubt that Yancy was fully prepared to volunteer for that job if needed. Most of his protective instinct was directed at baby bro, but he rarely hesitated to defend anyone else he thought needed it. Then again, half the population of the Academy was protective of Little Lea Franklin.

With Lightcap all tense and frustrated, Vic and Gunnar bullied Bruce and Trevin into their super-secret plan as a means of cheering up the First Lady of the Jaeger Program. "If we end up on YouTube, I will kill you," Bruce informed them.

"No cameras allowed," Gunnar promised. "And hey, nobody outside the Program would understand this anyway."

"Okay, good point."

And so it was that the pilots of two Mark I Jaegers got up in front of a mob of PPDC personnel and sang karaoke to Fall Out Boy, with their own special twist on it "in honor of the shieldmaiden, the mother of mechs, the goddess of Jaegers!" pouring on the flattery until everyone was cheering and Lightcap was beet red and giggling hysterically into D'onofrio's shirt.

Their carefully-composed parody lyrics got whoops and hoots, but the whole place went nuts and screamed like preteens at a boyband concert with the first chorus:

_My Pons knows what you did in the daaaaark!_

Lightcap would've hit the floor if D'onofrio hadn't caught her, and quite a few other people did simply collapse, shrieking with laughter. Next to them, all the newbie Rangers were in a pile, but managed to untangle themselves for the next chorus and roared out the lyrics with gusto:

_So light 'em up, up, up!  
>Light 'em up, up, up!<br>Light 'em up, up, up!  
>On firrreee!<em>

Deafened by the frenzied ovation at the end, Vic lowered his microphone and leaned toward the twins. "Told you!"

"Yeah, yeah!"

Sure, Bruce and Trevin would toss their Army Ranger dignity out the window anytime if it'd make Caitlin Lightcap scream like that. The tackle-hug they all got as the song ended was just a bonus. "Tokyo can't have you!" she yelled in Vic and Gunnar's ears over the noise of their still-cheering audience. "You have to stay!"

"Awww!"

It wasn't the last moment like that on New Year's Eve 2016. There were only a few bottles of cheap sparkling wine to pass around, so most of them were toasting with soda and water. People came and went with the duty shifts, and Tendo Choi swore up and down he saw Gagnon peeking through the side exit at one point. Raleigh Becket and Stephanie Lanphier ran around putting makeup on anyone who fell asleep - including Yancy - as midnight got closer, and they watched the ball drop on the East Coast.

"It's midnight in the land of my people!" Vic announced.

"Where, Bolivia?"

"Well, that too, but I meant New York."

Vic and Gunnar defended their title of Kodiak Island Dance Dance Revolution champions, though Stephanie and Kennedy gave them a run for the money. There were several more Jaeger-fied sing-alongs, and they all whooped and cheered when they saw Talon Tasmania on TV, dancing in front of a throng outside the Lima Shatterdome.

"I'd love to be a fly on the wall in Pentecost's office right now!" laughed Gunnar.

"Like the Tasmanian devils give a shit. They were the first dancing Jaeger," said Bruce proudly.

Suze and Devi Hassan were watching the enormous Mark I's hip-swiveling in fascination. "How the hell did they get her to do that?!"

"Serious maneuverability, my girls - that's why _her _nickname is Tango," Gunnar told them. "Australia and New Zealand didn't care if their pilots were local after Scissure; legend has it they actually were competitive dancers in Argentina. Dunno if it's true."

"Half-true," said Lightcap, slipping through the crowd on D'onofrio's arm to watch the show in Lima. "Maria and Miguel were another pair - like you two," she pointed at Vic and Gunnar, "who really got the compatibility by dancing. They dance before they can walk in Argentina."

"Are they married now?" asked Trevin. "I know they got engaged a few months back."

"Yep. Right after Christmas. Here's to the newlyweds!" That called for another spoonful of pseudo-champagne, they all decided, and a general announcement that everyone happily went along with.

"To Miguel Blanco and Maria Lopez-Blanco of Talon Tasmania, still the best dancing Jaeger jockeys in the world, and many years of wedded kaiju-ass-kicking bliss!"

"CHEERS!"

They were out of food by ten p.m., so people broke into their treasured personal stashes of goodies from the holidays – but invented bizarre ways for the partygoers to earn their treats. Raleigh Becket and Antwan Ferrier were dolling out hard candies from Raleigh's supply, involving an elaborate set of maneuvers that all had to be executed with the candy balanced on your nose.

The Engineers confiscated the table tennis equipment – twice – with the admonition that projectiles were _not _allowed in a Jaeger Bay. Bruce and Trevin got enough scruples to halt the game of Chicken (Tendo and Cady with Stephanie and Kennedy on their respective shoulders) before someone cracked their skull on the concrete floor.

"Save it for the Kwoon. We'll have the next party there on the mats."

"Aw, mannn!"

Vic and Gunnar gleefully hauled their newly-minted Rangers up in front of the crowd for a mass introduction and toast. "Raise your glasses to the graduates of Class 2016-B, ladies and gentlemen! Our newest additions to the proud brotherhood of Rangers: Kennedy and Stephanie!" (Pointing at the Beckets.) "Devi and Susanti!" (Pointing at the cheerleaders.) "And Raleigh and Yancy!" (Pointing at the Hassans.)

Amid the hoots, they revised it. "Rocky and Bullwinkle! Thelma and Louise! Snoopy and the Red Baron!"

This time it was D'onofrio who hit the floor as the newbie Rangers groaned, and people yelled suggestions. "Beavis and Butt-head Becket!"

"HEY!"

"Ren LaRue and Stimpy Lanphier!"

"Sonny and Cher Hassan!"

"This is getting away from you," Devi informed them.

Raleigh grabbed the microphone and flourished his hand at Vic and Gunnar. "We'd like to thank the Academy, and our hosts: Lucy and Ethel!"

"WOOOO!"

A brawl ensued over the microphone. "Gimme that, punk!"

Bruce and Trevin wrestled their way in and confiscated it. "Okay, okay, we're taking over the show, let's have a big hand for our hosts, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!"

"THEY'RE DEAD!" Everyone yelled back. Vic and Gunnar feigned outrage.

"And the pilots of the first Mark III: Team Testosterone… Fanty and Mingo!"

How fortunate that the Beckets were Huge Nerds. They didn't miss a beat. "I'm Fanty, he's Mingo!" Yancy announced.

"He's Fanty!" every nerd in the room yelled back.

"How do you know?"

"FANTY'S PRETTIER!"

"You walked right into that one, bro," Raleigh hooted.

"I meant to do that."

"Time for another song!" Vic yelled, getting the mic back from the twins.

"Gage out! You're on your own, Tunaris!" The twins ran for it, but Vic and Gunnar got a couple of the other guys to come sing back-up for them.

After going back and forth on the most obnoxious, sappy "inspiring" song that could be dedicated to the newbs, they settled on The Script and Will I Am.

_Standin' in the hall of fame!  
>And the world's gonna know your name!<br>'__Cause you burn with the brightest flame!  
>And the world's gonna know your name!<em>

The newbies swayed arm-in-arm with the Gages on one side and the D'onofrios on the other, and half the partygoers were waving their cell phone lights in the air – no doubt this one would wind up on YouTube, but whatever. Once it was over, they adjourned to the local TV channel for the local-time countdown to midnight.

The Hassans, Kennedy, and Stephanie scrambled to put on lipstick, and at the announcement of the New Year, promptly christened Beckets, Gages, Tunaris, and D'onofrios with smooch marks. "Those girls are gonna fit in just fine," Gunnar remarked as the male non-Rangers started pushing and shoving for their turns.

Stephanie shared her lipstick with Lightcap, then the other women got in on the act, and all the guys were boasting over who got a kiss from who. "Best. Party. EVER!" roared one of the K-Science geeks, his face and even his glasses covered in lipstick as fireworks went off on television somewhere in downtown Anchorage.

"Our work here is done," said Vic.

It gradually wound down, as all good things must come to an end, even the best party ever. The music got quieter, though Tendo Choi commandeered the selection for almost an hour, during which time they had absolutely zero songs that were recorded later than 1990.

NBC was running a tribute to the Jaeger Program, "Humanity's Heroes" or some such. Along with the montages and inspiring music, there were sappy romantic pieces playing to images of all the pilot couples, including the Blancos at their recent wedding, the D'onofrios, the Kaidanovskys, Hedy Keres and Peter Lepp, and so on.

The couples in the crowd seized the opportunity to slow dance, as some of the more energetic souls finally started to run out of steam. People were saying their good-nights and stumbling off to bed when Vic and Gunnar found Yancy Becket sprawled against the wall, watching the dance floor with a lazy smile, and his little brother sound asleep on his shoulder.

"Kiddo finally crashing? I didn't think he ever slept!"

Yancy snorted, untroubled by the lip marks on his own face or Raleigh's. "Sugar high letdown. He burned through my entire Christmas present, and I swear he ate most of 'em himself."

Stephanie and Kennedy spotted them as they finished their dance and summoned the Hassan sisters. The women brandished their eyebrow pencils and began advancing like a quartet of gleeful Disney villains, but Yancy laughingly shook his head and waved them off.

"_Come_ _onnn_, Yancy-kins, it's not like he doesn't draw stuff on you!" The girls pleaded and wheedled, but Protective Big Brother stood firm in the face of their pouts.

"We're calling it a night," D'onofrio informed them. "Happy New Year, everyone!"

"Same to you, Cap! G'night, Doc!" Lightcap was giggling and leaning on him as they stumbled out, and nobody'd had _that_ much to drink.

Yancy grinned. "I stand corrected; Lightcap must've got into the candy bag too."

"Raleigh and Antwan are pushovers. They kept letting her eat the things even though she couldn't keep 'em on her nose," Stephanie announced, and sat/fell on Yancy's other side. "I can't make it to barracks. Somebody carry me?"

"Me too," huffed Suze and dropped down next to her. Devi and Kennedy soon joined them so all six newbies were slumped in a rather sorry line along the wall.

The Gages shook their heads at the Tunaris. "And these, my fellow Americans, are the finest that the Jaeger Academy has to offer!"

"Says the guy with an army-issue tie around his head under his beret."

Bruce cheerfully flipped them off. "Auld Lang Syne to you too, Music Men. Happy New Year."

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Mid-Week:**_ _ Nobody ever said being a Jaeger pilot was easy. The Beckets are finally cleared to start piloting Gipsy, but amid testing her weapons, they discover a side effect to Jaeger operation that the PPDC hasn't warned them about in __**Chapter Fourteen: Drawbacks!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Devi and Susanti Hassan - First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24. One of three teams including the Beckets to graduate Class 2016-B and become Jaeger pilots.

Priya Katwal - Senior Engineer of the Jaeger Program, mid-50s, Indian ancestry. Once designed space station living quarters for NASA, now she designs conn-pod life support systems (and gives Rangers hell).

Antwan Ferrier - Oldest candidate from Class 2016-B, late 30s, Jamaican national, failed second cut at the Academy but stayed with PPDC to become a support officer.

Lea Franklin - Youngest candidate from Class 2016-B, age 17, lived in San Jose, California. Sole survivor of K-Day out of her family because she was traveling abroad with a school group. Extremely gifted, but has intense social anxiety due to PTSD. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC.

**Familiar Faces**

Dr. Caitlin Lightcap - age 30ish, from Pittsburgh, PA, inventor of the pons neural bridge and co-pilot of Brawler Yukon until its destruction. Retired from piloting to supervise pons training and drift sync testing at the Jaeger Academy. Now married to her co-pilot, Sergio D'onofrio.

Captain Sergio D'onofrio - age 30ish, test pilot and then co-pilot of Brawler Yukon,until its destruction, and moved on to a training position at the Jaeger Academy. (He was a Lieutenant in Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero - I'm assuming he got promoted. He and Caitlin Lightcap fell in love, and Stacker Pentecost referred to them as "the D'onofrios" a year later.)

Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld - engineer who created and designed the first Jaegers, now head of Jaeger Engineering in the PPDC. Had an affair with Caitlin Lightcap when she was his graduate student and he was married, which they resumed after his divorce while they were working on the Jaeger project. Caitlin ended the relationship after drifting and falling in love with the test pilot, Sergio D'onofrio.


	14. Drawbacks

_**Author's Notes:** Many thanks to everyone for the feedback, and please keep it coming! The Rangers that are referred to in this chapter, Peter Lepp and Hedy Keres, are OCs, the pilots of Russia's Mark II, Eden Assassin._

**Chapter Fourteen: Drawbacks**

_PPDC Proving Grounds and Assembly Building, Kodiak Island, Alaska…_

_January, 2017…_

"It's not all romance and glamor," the newbies – both Ranger and non-Ranger – were warned by the senior officers. "There's pain, there's sacrifice, there's frustration, and exhaustion. The clock is always running until the next attack. The last one was at the end of September. Usually, they fall between four to five months apart, so we're heading into the red zone just by virtue of the time that's gone by. We need to start re-locating the Jaegers, but we can't do it until the next attack has happened. We just can't risk having Jaegers in transit if something comes out of the Breach."

So Coyote Tango was stuck in Anchorage until the all-clear so she could head back to Japan, and Talon Tasmania was twiddling her thumbs in Lima waiting to go back to standing guard over Australia and New Zealand. As the month of January wore on, all the construction crews at the half-finished Shatterdomes were spending a lot of time looking over their shoulders.

As for Class 2016-B, they were warned off the Academy for the first trimester. "Let the recruits concentrate, and let the instructors do their work. Now that the Shatterdome simulator is up and running, you can do some of your exercises there instead of on campus. Hands off the new meat!"

Dr. Lightcap joked that she had such a hard time not giving the recruits advice that they were packing her off to another hemisphere for eight weeks. "Really?!" someone exclaimed.

"No, not really. I'm going to Hong Kong. Special project."

"Special how?" Raleigh asked slyly, and she winked at him.

"_Special_, meaning I'd have to kill you." She pointed at Yancy. "You keep him in line while I'm gone!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Yancy mock-saluted as the others snickered at Raleigh's wounded expression.

A few times they were out on the grounds doing their own exercises as the drill masters went thundering over the hills with a flock of recruits, bellowing instructions and commands to keep up. "How big's this class?" Raleigh wondered.

"At opening assembly, they'd admitted four hundred sixty-two," said Vic Tunari. "It's been three days now, so they're probably down by at least fifty."

The temptation for Raleigh and Yancy to go pep-talk the recruits wasn't too severe, since they were preoccupied with drivesuit fitting and preparing to start logging time in Gipsy. They were finally cleared on the last week of January, and even Yancy was a fidgety bundle of nerves. As in 2016, everybody who could get off-duty was out on the hills surrounding the proving grounds to watch the launch, just as Raleigh and Yancy and their Academy fellows had done with Yankee Star and Eden Assassin. There were no press permitted until the official, formal launch, but the entire PPDC population was using insider privilege to get a peek at the first Mark III.

"Have you two ever done those Tower of Terror drop thrill ride things?" Priya asked them in the drivesuit room.

"A few times, why?"

"Well, you're about to do it again."

Locking into Gipsy's rigs in their fit-to-order suits and armor, Raleigh and Yancy exchanged glances. "Well, they call it a drop," Yancy mused.

It was. Raleigh let out a yelp that he quickly smothered by turning it into a whoop as the conn-pod plummeted. _Note to self: new blackmail material. Rals hates those drop-rides, _Yancy thought, and grinned as they slowed to lock into place.

They got a brief look at the masses of watchers crowded onto the catwalks and clear spaces before the screen obscured for the neural handshake. "Ready to step into my head, kid?" Yancy asked, carrying on their running joke.

"Ready to step into hers, right, pretty girl?" Raleigh said, addressing the conn-pod.

The drift had certainly gotten easier.

_"We have a lot of good shared memories. But the best one, bar none… the first time we walked in him. He's ours._" _The twins pointed down the hill at Romeo._

_"You are all declared Ranger Ready." _

_"She's the first of the Mark IIIs, flying the American flag_," _said Jasper Schoenfeld. "And she's yours."_

_"She's pretty, guys." _

_"She is that."_

_"My pons knows what you did in the daaaark! So light 'em up, up, up!_"

_"Note to self: new blackmail material - "_

_HEY!_

Reality re-formed as they laughed. "Neural handshake complete."

_Hello, there, Gipsy._ Yancy grinned sideways at Raleigh. Not that they hadn't been doing conn-pod testing in her actual conn-pod for over a week, but this was the first time she'd been fully online and operational. "Right hemisphere, calibrating."

"Left hemisphere, calibrating."

"Looking good, gentlemen," said Priya from the pod room. "Handing you over to LOCCENT."

_Oh my god, Yance. _

_Easy there, kiddo. _

But they were both wearing shit-eating grins as the Assembly Building's massive bay doors opened, and the scramble crawlers rolled them out onto the proving grounds. There were people swarming the surrounding hillsides, crowded onto the few upstairs balconies of the buildings, sitting on top of vehicles, looking like ants from the Beckets' perspectives.

"Rangers, this is Marshall Vincent Gagnon. Begin pre-combat diagnostic drills."

"Acknowledged, Marshall. Initiating walk-through." He glanced at Raleigh. _Ready?_

_Very. _

And Gipsy Danger took her first steps, to a roar of tinny-sounding cheers over the comm speakers. "Heads up, Romeo Blue, there is a new girl in town!" yelled the Tunaris over Coyote's pod comm.

"We see her, Coyote! And she is HOT!"

"Gage, Tunari, you are not authorized to be in your pods or distracting the other pilots," Gagnon snapped. "Now zip it!"

"Sorry, sir!"

A part of Yancy and Raleigh was a little irritated; they were trying to concentrate, so Gagnon was right. But for the most part, they were too absorbed with the tests, to move their limbs and _feel _her respond, to turn their heads and _see _with superhuman eyes, to really register anyone or anything else.

They knew the diagnostic tests and walk-through drills by heart. They could have done them in any and every Jaeger currently commissioned. They'd done them all multiple times in the simulator.

But this was _their _Jaeger. This was Gipsy Danger. _She's ours. _

_I think I'm in love, Rals_.

_You and me both, bro. _

* * *

><p>They didn't get to fire Gipsy's plasma cannons until the third test, and that day, nobody was allowed outside to watch – or anywhere within a hefty radius of the proving grounds. Air traffic control had to be notified, and all shipping traffic diverted for a "live fire exercise" that was even more involved than firing Brawler's shoulder rockets. There was a specially-made target in place, instruments surrounding the proving grounds to measure the heat and energy and byproducts from every possible angle.<p>

They were only allowed one discharge for the first test. Yancy was fully prepared to toss a coin, but Dr. Schoenfeld and the munitions specialists laughed and said, "Sorry, Big Brother, executive override. We'll start with the right hand. Be patient, Raleigh, you'll get your turn."

Yancy grimaced apologetically at Raleigh, but his brother wasn't too miffed. Raleigh did ask, "Is it _that_ experimental?"

"Everything about anti-kaiju weaponry is," said the chief weapons developer. "It took multiple nuke hits to take those bastards out. Directing that kind of power into the Jaeger systems without obliterating the Jaeger and everything else for fifty miles? _And _keeping it under control? Very, very new territory. We've had fatalities in the test runs for some of this stuff."

_Jesus. That's what we get for asking questions. _So they were both pretty tense as they took Gipsy out onto the proving grounds that day. Test warning sirens were going off for hours. Yancy had a nagging headache by the time they had the order to fire.

It took a long time to even load the thing. He could have sworn it didn't take that long to charge in the simulator. At least the configuration mechanisms worked like they did in the sim, and he didn't bungle that. The charge built straight through Gipsy's frame, making them vibrate until Yancy was gritting his teeth, and he could feel Raleigh doing the same.

He _felt _the cannon's charge complete even before the screen flashed READY. Then, the massive blast of liquefied energy seemed to go through his body before passing into the cannon. For a few seconds, his vision whited out, and he was seeing only with Gipsy's eyes through the drift that he hit the target.

"Direct hit!" announced LOCCENT over cheers of the onlookers in the bunkers. "Nice shot, Gipsy One!"

"Holy Christ," Raleigh breathed. Their target was now a blackened, distorted heap on the water. "Did we fry all the instruments?"

Someone laughed. "The ones on the target, yeah, but that's par for the course for this material."

"Good work, Gipsy Danger, proceed to reentry."

"Roger," Yancy croaked, not wanting to admit how disoriented he felt.

Too bad there was someone else in his head. "Yance?" _You okay? _

_Fine – _

"Gipsy One? Yancy, you all right? Your vitals are shaky."

"I'm good," he insisted, but then one of the medics in LOCCENT barged into the conversation.

"Reminder, Rangers, part of your job during testing is to let us know how it's affecting you physically. You won't do us any good if you disable yourselves in the fight."

_Okay, you got me. _And he didn't have the energy to argue. "Okay, my head's killing me, and... kinda disoriented."

"Hmm. Let's get you scanned along with the system diagnostics. We may need to tweak the controls. Get yourselves onto the crawler, then we'll deactivate, see if that helps."

He thought that detaching the handshake and powering Gipsy down would ease it, but it didn't. He could sense Raleigh's alarm as he tried not to shake in the harness and fought to keep his eyes focused. By the time they were back in the bay and the pod was ready to detach, he couldn't stand the light and had his eyes squeezed shut.

"Something's wrong," he dimly heard Raleigh saying. "He can't _see_!"

_I'm okay, Rals. _That line always tripped off his tongue easily and automatically, regardless of whether it was true, but it couldn't now. He was going to vomit if he opened his mouth. The pressure in his head was so intense that his skull was going to blast his helmet apart. He hoped like hell that Raleigh wasn't getting any of this.

He thought he blacked out a few times, but it hadn't given any relief, and the next thing he knew, there were people around the rig, detaching him, voices chattering about his blood pressure. He just wished they'd all fucking shut up and be quiet and turn the damn lights off!

Over it all, worst of all, was his brother's frightened voice. He hated it when Raleigh got scared.

* * *

><p>"What the hell did that thing do to him?!" Raleigh was yelling, and Bruce and Trevin had to tackle him to keep him from lunging at the chief weapons developer.<p>

"This doesn't make any sense - the charge was no worse than the simulator!" the man was protesting. "We made the systems identical, and you both came through that just fine!"

"Raleigh, kiddo, back off. Let the medics work," the twins insisted, and hauled him to the side while the techs got Yancy out of his armor and were making way for the doctors.

One of the medics came over to check on Raleigh. "Are you having any symptoms?"

Raleigh shook his head, but submitted to having lights shined in his eyes and vitals monitors hooked up. "My head hurts, but I think that was him. There was... this pressure."

Suddenly, Dr. Tán from the Academy looked up from where he was examining Yancy. "Are either one of you prone to migraines?"

"What? No. Is that what this is?" Raleigh looked baffled.

Bruce slapped his forehead. "Gah! I get you, Doc."

"What?!"

"Take it easy, Raleigh," said Trevin. "It's probably Jaeger-head."

"What the hell is Jaeger-head?!"

"It's a lesser-known, unpleasant side effect of training among our later generations," said Dr. Tán, studying his instruments. "Where's the nearest dark room?"

"Academy," said someone.

"Then it's time we put one in the Assembly Building sickbay. Let's move. It's not that bad," he told Raleigh as the medics wheeled Yancy to the elevator. "We'll do brain scans, make sure there aren't any aneurysms or brain clots, but nothing's shown up before now, and we check you regularly. The Tunaris have both had it," he added as an aside to Bruce and Trevin.

"I don't get it," Raleigh protested as they trailed after the medical team. "What's Jaeger-head?"

"By all accounts, it's a kaiju-sized migraine headache. We haven't had it," Bruce explained. "Only pilots who've trained in more than one Jaeger have, and only the ones who _don't _get migraines. It doesn't mean there's brain damage, it's just some kind of nasty side effect."

At the call from Bruce and Trevin, Vic and Gunnar dropped what they were doing and came to meet them in sickbay, taking over the tag-teaming of Yancy's frantic brother. "Vic's had it once, I've had it twice," said Gunnar. "It's about twelve hours of hell, but the docs have already developed some good drugs. There's a dark room in every Shatterdome sickbay now."

"Dark room?"

"Exactly how it sounds. Interior room that they keep pitch black and sound proof. Really strong painkillers, ice, pressure points, and it wears off in about a day."

Raleigh went ashen as he watched the medics getting Yancy into the MRI. The poor guy couldn't even stand. They had a mask over his eyes. "This doesn't look like just a headache," Raleigh whispered.

"Well, believe us, it's not 'just a headache.' Neither of us could move on our own either. Pete Lepp thought he was dying," said Vic. "First time somebody came down with it, the medics thought it was a brain hemorrhage."

Trevin nodded. "Five of the Mark II pilots have come down with it now, and a couple of _really _unlucky bastards have had it more than once."

"Including me," Gunnar confirmed. "Second time, I told the docs to just nuke me from orbit."

The four Rangers stood watch over their stricken comrades as Dr. Tán finished his scans and diagnosed that it was "only" Jaeger-head. "So the good news is that he's not injured. The bad news is that he's in for a very rough day. We'll try and make it as easy on him as possible." He smiled wryly as Raleigh immediately got up to follow them to the hastily-emptied interior store room they'd commandeered. "I'd tell you to go get some rest, but you won't. If you're going to stay, you'll need these."

He proffered a set of night vision goggles, and for the first time since emerging from the conn-pod, the younger Becket cracked a grin.

* * *

><p>The hours oozed by in a haze of misery for Yancy. Once he was out of light and noise, it got a little better, but he still wished he could muster the coherence to ask somebody to just shoot him and be done with it. He felt like he was in the center of a giant echo chamber, or maybe a pressure cooker.<p>

Every sound thundered and ricocheted through his skull. Every movement made his brain slam into his sinuses. Every flicker of light, even through his eyelids and the mask somebody had put on him, was like a spear made out of Gipsy's plasma straight into his eyes. The only reason he didn't scream then was because he knew that would hurt more. It was all he could do not to sob.

Somebody injected him with some kind of narcotic. That eased it a little, or at least made him care a little less. Above the eye mask, there were cold compresses on his forehead. That was wonderful, as were the fingertips massaging his temples and scalp and points around his neck and jaw.

He drifted in and out of awareness, but a few times, a nagging urgency seized him, and he twitched to life, forcing himself through the blinding pain. "Ral-eigh?" he mumbled. "He - okay?"

"I'm fine, Yance," whispered a familiar voice.

"Your brother's fine. He doesn't have it. Try and rest."

Well, that was all right. As long as Raleigh wasn't in pain too, then yes, he could rest.

A long time later, he came back out of the haze and no longer felt like his skull was being pried apart. He still hurt, but he could think again. He must've made a sound, because someone moved nearby, then the compress on his forehead was changed out for a colder one. "Wha' time is it?"

"'Bout one a.m."

Shit, it had been almost fourteen hours. Yancy frowned to himself. "Rals?"

"Yeah. Feeling better?"

"Little bit. What're you doing here?"

There was a long pause, then Raleigh asked slowly, "Where else would I be?" He sounded confused.

A few days later, they could joke about it. "You scared the _shit _out of me," Raleigh grumbled.

"It's lucky you people didn't warn us about this at recruiting. I'd have scrubbed out for sure," Yancy told the Tunaris. "I didn't know it was possible to hurt that bad."

"What happens if it hits you during a fight?!" Suze Hassan demanded.

Dr. Tán knocked on wood. "So far, that hasn't happened. One of our theories is that the adrenaline prevents it, which is consistent with a lot of pain reactions and injuries. We're working on trying to prevent it, but so much of our research has to focus on not killing our pilots with the neural loads or causing brain bleeds and seizures. I have a got a cocktail of stimulants that I _think _would hold it off in an emergency, but then you'd get a rebound."

"Good God. As long as we get the choice to opt out after the engagement by a bullet to the head," Yancy growled. The Tunaris nodded; Yancy was only half-joking, and he had a feeling they were on board with that too.

"What was it you said?" Raleigh asked Gunnar. "Nuke you from orbit?"

Yancy nodded gravely. "It's the only way to be sure." All the nerds in the vicinity laughed.

Suze and Devi exchanged dry smiles. "I never thought I would be glad to be a migraine sufferer," Devi remarked. "Strange that we don't get Jaeger-head."

"That we know of," Dr. Tán pointed out. Now everyone knocked on wood. "Consider: we know the neural load of a Jaeger is intense even balanced between two pilots. And every Jaeger is different. Our theory is that although we've worked out the systems so that the strain doesn't cause brain damage, there's still a lot of pressure involved. Changing from one handshake to another could still be a shock to the system. Maybe migraine sufferers have already adapted to those stresses."

"Everyone who gets it trained in Brawler before switching to their own mech," Kennedy mused. "And Brawler's the oldest model. They literally go from the oldest to the newest."

"That's the theory."

_AND... _the facility alert sounded. Tán's tablet went flying, and he dove after it with a curse as Yancy clapped his hands over his ears. He was mostly over it, but still noise-sensitive, and those damn sirens made everyone's teeth hurt at the best of times.

_"Attention. Attention. Yellow Alert. Movement in the Breach. All personnel to stations._"

Everyone looked at the nearest calendar. "February 2nd. Four months and three days since the last one," observed Steph. "I'll say this for them, they're polite and punctual."

"Party time, boys and girls. See you later!" The Gages and Tunaris bolted for their bays, and the three pairs of fledglings headed for the war room in the Assembly Building.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon:** The newbie Rangers watch as their comrades go back into battle and put their skills and technology to the test. The Jaeger Program passes a grim milestone in **Chapter Fifteen: Behind The Scenes!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Devi and Susanti Hassan - First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 26 and 24. One of three teams including the Beckets to graduate Class 2016-B and become Jaeger pilots.

Priya Katwal - Senior Engineer of the Jaeger Program, mid-50s, Indian ancestry. Once designed space station living quarters for NASA, now she designs conn-pod life support systems (and gives Rangers hell).

Marshall Vincent Gagnon - Commanding Officer at the Jaeger Academy and Anchorage Shatterdome, Canadian Air Force, mid-50s, successor to Stacker Pentecost


	15. Behind The Scenes

_**Author's Notes:**__ Thank you all for the great reviews! Please keep them coming! A canon character makes a quick debut in this chapter - anybody know who? _

_**Canon Note:**__ In the movie, Stacker Pentecost spoke of a Jaeger called "Tango Tasmania," but Travis Beacham subsequently said that name was incorrect, because no two Jaegers had the same name elements (and there was also a Coyote Tango.) So I made up some fanon about that to explain it. It's on my Tumblr if anyone wants to read it and a little history of the OC Rangers I invented: Talon "Tango" Tasmania, The First Dancing Jaeger._

**Chapter Fifteen: Behind The Scenes**

_Jaeger Academy and Assembly Facilities, Kodiak Island, Alaska..._

_February 2, 2017..._

The newly-minted Rangers had to dodge their way from the Academy infirmary through a few hundred recruits, many of whom either hadn't read or just plain forgot the Event Instructions. One of them came around a corner too fast and plowed into Raleigh, knocking them both to the floor. "OOF! Dammit - oh! Sorry, sir," she muttered, untangling herself.

"Easy there, Recruit," Yancy laughed, giving them both a hand up. He blinked at her. "Do I know you?"

She looked Asian, or maybe Native? Obviously she had some military instincts; she snapped to attention. "Ilisapie Flint, sir."

Devi stepped to his side. "Dismissed, Recruit." She gave Yancy a meaningful look, and waited until they were moving again. "You're not supposed to talk to the schoolchildren."

"What, I can't make an exception when they pile drive my brother? She just looked familiar."

Once they were outside, jogging down to the Assembly Building, Devi confirmed, "She is. She's a Sideways." That was the slang for PPDC personnel who decided to take a stab at becoming pilots. "But we're not supposed to notice until first cut is over."

"Yes, ma."

A reunion for the previous Academy classes followed in the big war room of the Assembly Building. Most of them - newbie Rangers included – were still in various stages of training, so they'd all be stuck in front of the conference room screens for the duration, biting their nails with nothing else to do.

Coyote's support team was soon out the door. "Are they ready to deploy?" Raleigh demanded.

"If necessary. They're moving her onto the grounds now. Hawks'll pick her up if they have to," said Tendo, watching the commands from Anchorage's LOCCENT.

He, Indra Hassan, and Cady Spencer were training as LOCCENT techs. Christian Warner was training as a drivesuit tech, and Chloe Warner had decided to join K-Watch.

"Any word from Kaiju Traffic Control yet?" Stephanie asked Chloe.

She shook her head. "They suspended the latest detector installment project two weeks ago, once we were past the three month mark. It's going to re-start after this attack. Last direction they had was northwest, but that was less than a mile from the Breach. They all tend to go in circles at first."

"Looking to pick up a trail," Yancy murmured. "Wonder how the recruits are taking it."

"Last I saw they were still running around like a stampede," Christian told him. "I don't remember us being that freaked out last year."

"Be nice; we'd all made the second cut by the time Reckoner showed up, and had... what, three emergency drills? Four. They've only had one," said Kennedy.

Most of them wound up going over their own drills again for their various departments just so they'd have a way to pass the time. Eventually, some of the training supervisors showed up - and took them through the drills again.

Active duty Rangers would have to wait out the entire alert period in their conn-pods and full suits and armor until they had a confirmation of where the bogey was going. LOCCENT personnel had a rotating schedule of on-call status, and a very limited time to get to their posts once an alert went out. The J-techs and K-scientists had the same, and timed readiness checks on all the equipment under their responsibility.

They sat watching Coyote Tango getting prepared for her conn-pod drop, and then she was scrambled from the Assembly Building out onto the proving grounds among her fleet of jumphawks to await orders. "Hey, where's Antwan?" asked Tendo, looking around.

"He's on duty. He finished the first stage already," Christian replied.

"Seriously?! Great, now I feel inadequate."

Yancy laughed. "Jaeger Traffic Control takes a little more time, my man. Antwan's been doing people traffic control for years." Antwan Ferrier had opted for personnel coordination, and was already in charge of a small on-base team. After herding tourists on and off cruise ships, including during the Cabo attack, keeping control of a few dozen trained rescue/recovery workers held no fear for the Jamaican.

Chloe jumped up a split second before the alarm sounded again. "Bogey detected. Marshall Islands."

"Uh-ohhh, sucker's heading east," murmured Tendo.

"Southeast," said someone, studying the map. The red bogey blip was among the islands southeast of the Breach.

"Not that far south," Chloe replied grimly. "Plenty of time for him to change direction any way he wants. Scissure made it almost to Hawaii before he decided on Australia."

Raleigh, Kennedy, and Stephanie were on the floor against the wall with their knees against their chests. They certainly wouldn't have passed themselves off as Rangers at this moment. The sight gave Yancy a pang, remembering just how young his brother and two of their fellow Rangers were.

He felt a little better once Tendo turned on the camera feeds to the Academy rooms (and nobody asked where Tendo'd gotten the codes). Some of the recruits were freaking already, and they still had hours – probably days – of waiting to go.

Devi Hassan scolded some of the others for scoffing. "If all you're going to do is mock them, turn it off. You're not showing yourself any better."

Yancy and Raleigh exchanged a _look_, privately agreeing with their more vocal cohorts that the recruits could stand to get a grip, but they held it in. In all fairness, most of the newbies were keeping it together, if tense and restless, but that was true of everybody anywhere near the Pacific coast of the world at the moment. Yancy spotted Raleigh's pile-driver among a group doing Bushido drills with rigid concentration on one side of the gym. _Good on her, even if she could stand to watch where she's going in the halls, _he thought with amusement.

* * *

><p>"I swear it did not used to take this long before we got here," Cady muttered at hour number ten. The kaiju blip didn't seem to have moved much in any direction.<p>

"That's because the public doesn't even get told until the bogey hits the thousand-mile mark," said Chloe. "People panic too easily. Remember the last one in 2014? They tried turning the sirens on in Australia as soon as they picked up movement in the Breach, and people rioted. Then it turned out he was heading for Chile, and they rioted again!"

"I remember that; we were there," Suze Hassan huffed. "It was embarrassing. Yes, everyone was angry and grieving after Scissure, but the hysteria only caused more death and damage."

Indra nodded, but Devi shook her head, more inclined to be charitable. "There were no Jaegers then. That was the fifth attack, and there was no end in sight, no hope. Of course, people were losing all restraint. The world was ending, and no one could help us."

Interestingly, Yancy saw his brother nodding to that. Raleigh'd been very quiet during the emergency planning of the pre-Jaeger days, while Jazmine had cried and fretted constantly. Both were signs of the same fear, Yancy had known. He wondered if he'd deliberately made himself forget just how scared Raleigh had been back then. Raleigh Becket unable to muster a smartass remark was a major warning sign. After Brawler Yukon took out Karloff, he'd started snarking again.

People dozed on and off on tables, floor, and in chairs as day gave way to night and the hours inched by. No mustaches or obscenities were drawn on the sleepers in eyeliner this time. The next alert went off at four a.m. as the kaiju made his appearance in French Polynesia. He didn't hang around long, but wreaked plenty of destruction on the crossing. He made landfall on the northwest side of the island and departed on the southeast side, still apparently on the same heading.

"We've got a codename now," Tendo announced. "Vaulimi."

The Australians frowned to each other. "Is that Maori?"

"Tahitian. Means 'eight legs,' according to the spotters."

"I only counted six legs," said Raleigh.

"Somebody counted eight, that's all I know."

"Chile again, you think?" Yancy asked Chloe, who was running projection programs on her laptop. Most of the currents and the kaiju's general direction seemed to indicate South America.

"Still too early to tell," she sighed. "The spotters have him now, but if he dives again, we'll lose him."

He dove, and they did lose him again. The trainees gnawed on emergency rations, did their drills, and slept restlessly for almost another full day. The red alerts finally went out when he turned up off Galapagos. "Oh, _fuck, _if he gets into Panama..." someone hissed.

"Lima's already on it," Tendo reported. "Pentecost has Diablo Intercept already at the canal on standby. Hope those guys got some sleep last night. Solar Prophet's staying in Lima, and Talon Tasmania's going to float depending on where he comes in.

* * *

><p><em>February 5, 2017...<em>

Nearly seventy-two hours after detecting movement in the Breach, K-Watch finally issued a prediction: Guayaquil, Ecuador. "Really? Don't think I've ever heard of the place," muttered Christian.

"It's one of the biggest cities, but the oceanographers have been recording major runoff problems, and the currents take it straight into Galapagos," Chloe told them. "All he has to do now is follow the pollution trail."

"Not that any part of this is 'good,' but better that than Panama City," Raleigh murmured. "God, we would be so utterly fucked if they found the canal."

"It will _not _happen," Yancy growled. Stupid, empty thing to say, but he felt intensely determined on that score. "We'll drop every Jaeger in front of it including Gipsy if we have to."

They all breathed a little easier, and Chloe was rather smug - already getting into departmental loyalty - when the prediction of Guayaquil proved correct, and Vaulimi headed straight for it. "We are earning our budget, my friends!"

_"Talon Tasmania, now deploying for intercept, northwest shore of Isla Puna. ETA with contact point, twenty minutes."_

_"He's coming straight at you, Talon!" _said Lima's LOCCENT. "_Looks like he's going to weigh in just shy of Reckoner."_

"_He's smaller?_ _I think I'm insulted,_" the female pilot complained. "_Heavy smog in the air, visibility is low. Switching to instruments." _

It was full daylight on Ecuador, but the spotters had to show the images on infrared for anyone to have a clue what was going on. Talon waded into the mouth of the river between the island and the mainland and began blasting the kaiju with her white phosphorus cannons. "Pretty!" said Steffie. "Too bad it's daytime."

There were cheers, hastily stifled, from the feed of the Academy Assembly when two of Vaulimi's legs got blown off, but then the kaiju rallied and charged the Jaeger. "_Here we go, watch the legs!_"

Yancy swore his teeth rattled in sympathy from the blow as monster and mech crashed onto the beach. _"Mierda! Deploying front blades!" _huffed Miguel. Talon's signature titanium hook blades were barely visible, but the kaiju reared away from them with a very satisfying screech, spurting its noxious ichor.

Talon pressed the attack and began hacking at two of the limbs that Vaulimi was balancing on, but the problem with having eight appendages was that even after cutting two off, they were still outnumbered. And the kaiju had a long neck with a bird-like beak on its head - a beak with teeth. White phosphorus erupted into the air like a fireworks display gone wrong as Vaulimi tore into one of the Jaeger's main cannons.

"Ah, shit!_" _Raleigh hissed.

"_Right cannon is down! Hydraulic pressure dropping!"_

"_Talon Tasmania, do you need backup?!"_

"_This is Lima LOCCENT, Solar Prophet is lifting off._"

_"I think we have him - stand by - _" Talon slapped her weakened right arm across Vaulimi's front, still inflicting plenty of new gashes from its blades, then swung back in as the kaiju recoiled and nailed it in the neck with a pulse from the working cannon. _"Trying to - get the head - _" The roars abruptly stopped as the narrow neck finally severed, and people whooped all around...

... but the kaiju was still moving. _"TANGO, we still have signature! Repeat, still have signature!"_

"_Hijo de puta, that's a decoy head - "_

"OH!" Chloe cried and clapped her hands over her mouth, people shouted and cursed, and Yancy found himself on his feet along with them as the kaiju - a second, larger mouth now visible further down its trunk - brought its six remaining limbs around the Jaeger and hurled itself on top of her.

_"Solar Prophet, deploy immediately!"_

_" - losing - comp - reactor casing - mayday, mayday!"_

"Jesus, oh, Jesus," someone was hissing, someone on the comms was _screaming, _and Yancy's mind was an endless chant of _no, no, no! _

Jaeger and kaiju were rolling in the river, Kaiju Blue spraying, but also fireballs bursting whenever Talon surfaced... oh, shit, this was bad.

_"Me cago en Dios, MOVE! This is Solar Prophet, ETA eight minutes!"_

_"Talon Tasmania, Talon Tasmania, do you copy?!"_

There was nothing from Talon's comm but static. Then the kaiju started moving again, dragging itself down the river towards the shore. The half-submerged Jaeger wasn't moving.

_"Guayaquil, you have incoming! Incoming! Take cover now!_"

"Oh my god," Tendo was whispering, staring at his LOCCENT screen. "Oh my god. Her reactor's leaking."

"Does LOCCENT think they might still be alive?" murmured Kennedy.

"Doesn't say. I doubt it."

The stinking thing was badly wounded, for what little consolation they could take from that. They could tell from the way it was lurching as it hauled itself ashore, but it still flattened every structure that it crossed, and Kaiju Blue was spilling all over the city. Someone turned another screen to a news channel that was showing video of the stricken Jaeger, gouts of flame still bursting from her hull.

"_We've been ordered to move away immediately; radiation levels are rising_," said a news announcer grimly. _"The authorities are declaring a nuclear emergency._"

_"Here he comes, Jaeger Solar Prophet of Peru, being carried by helicopters over the north side of Guayaquil!_"

_"This is Prophet, we're deploying flaretorch as soon as we're in range. Tell all civilians in the area to get underground; we can't wait!"_

_"Already on it, Solar Prophet!" _said LOCCENT. "_Command says fire at will, take that thing down by any means necessary!"_

_"With pleasure! Intercepting!" _Talon Tasmania had sliced and sizzled Vaulimi for a relatively easy finish. Down to three limbs, dragging itself around among the buildings, it couldn't do much for defense as Solar Prophet blasted it with his massive blowtorches. Prophet wisely started from a small distance, but came in closer and closer as he knocked the beast onto its back and turned it into barbecue, then hacked off all three remaining limbs for good measure.

_"LOCCENT, do we have signature?"_

_"That's a negative, Solar Prophet, no signature. This is Lima Local Command, declaring kaiju destroyed, 1544 hours."_

Nobody in Anchorage or on the speakers cheered this time. "_Roger that, LOCCENT, we're moving to Talon Tasmania's position."_

_"Stand by, Solar Prophet, stand by. We're getting massive radiation readings. We can't put you at risk."_

There was a long pause, and then... "_Sorry, LOCCENT, I didn't hear you._"

_"Solar Prophet, this is Marshall Stacker Pentecost, I'm ordering you to stay where you are!" _barked a familiar voice.

"_Still not receiving you, LOCCENT."_

A few weak, dismal chuckles rippled through the room. Yancy supposed he'd do exactly the same thing if he were in that conn-pod, but bitterly admitted that Pentecost was probably right - there wasn't any point. Not with those radiation readings. Even if Maria and Miguel Blanco had survived the fight itself, they'd already many times a lethal dose of radiation. _If they're lucky, they're not alive, _a small, dark part of him whispered.

Solar Prophet continued ignoring both admonitions and arguments and moved down the river to the wreckage. "_I don't think your choppers have better shielding than we do in this conn-pod. Tell them to move back; we're checking Talon."_

But it was only a few moments of examining the fallen mech that Solar Prophet straightened and turned away. Yancy could almost imagine that the Jaeger's shoulders slumped. _"Visual contact with the conn-pod."_

_Oh, God. _

"_Talon One and Talon Two are down. Visual contact. The conn-pod is incinerated, LOCCENT. No rescue needed. Rest their souls." _

"Amen," somebody whispered, and out of the corner of his eye, Yancy saw Tendo cross himself. A few of the others had their heads bowed, lips moving.

Yancy and Raleigh had never been much for religion, and Yancy felt as skeptical about a god as he did about his parents, the older he got. Too many people were dying in agony pleading for mercy. If there was a god, he was no more reliable than any human.

_We knew this would happen. One day, it had to happen. Rangers were going to die; it was just a matter of time. _

Did it have to be the newlyweds?

_Would it feel any better if it had been somebody else? _

Probably not.

**_To be continued..._**

_**Coming Monday:**__ Even during the Jaeger Program's golden years, there were setbacks. The world mourns the first fallen Rangers and the victims of Guayaquil. But then, the media gets an early scoop on the identity of the American Mark III Jaeger's up-and-coming pilots, and our heroes need back-up of a different sort in __**Chapter Sixteen: United Front!**_

**PLEASE remember to review!**

**Translations**

_Mierda - _shit

_Hijo de puta - _son of a whore

_Me cago en Dios - _goddamnit

**Original Character Guide**

Rangers

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Indonesian-Australian sisters, ages 26 and 24, who graduated the Academy along with the Beckets and are expected to be assigned to an Australian Jaeger. (Which one? You can probably work it out from the canon sources, but if not, wait and see!)

Miguel Blanco and Maria Lopez-Blanco: Rangers of the Mark I Jaeger, Talon "Tango" Tasmania. Argentinian Navy pilots, they discovered their drift compatibility by dancing, and started the Ranger tradition of making their Jaeger dance. Fell in love during training and married shortly after Christmas 2016. Tragically, they were the first Rangers to die in battle only a few months after their wedding.

Trainees from Class 2016-B (the class that graduated the Beckets, the Hassans, Stephanie LaRue and Kennedy Lanphier)

Indra Hassan: Devi and Susanti's cousin, age 37, failed second cut for drift compatibility but now training as a LOCCENT technician with Tendo Choi

Cady Spencer: Filipino-American from Oregon, age 25, failed second cut also but training as a LOCCENT tech with Tendo and Indra

Chloe and Christian Warner: African-Americans half-siblings from Georgia, ages 23 and 25, failed second cut but Chloe is training to join K-Watch and Christian is training as a drivesuit technician.

Antwan Ferrier: Jamaican national, age 38, failed second cut but training as strike troop personnel coordinator


	16. United Front

_**Author's Notes:** Thank you all once again for the wonderful reviews! Please keep 'em coming! I noticed that since we're now into 2017, I needed a new president. As a rule, I don't use real people for speaking parts (okay, there'll be one exception coming up later) so rather than employ any real world politician, I borrowed one from another fandom. Anybody recognize him?_

_**Canon Notes:** The pilots of Solar Prophet are OCs. There's a little blurb on them at the end of the chapter, but also see my Tumblr post, Pacific Rim Headcanon: The Mark II Jaegers, if you'd like some more detailed speculation on the Jaegers, the pilots, and the countries they defend._

**Chapter Sixteen: United Front**

_Jaeger Academy and Assembly Facility, Kodiak Island, Alaska…_

_February 5, 2017…_

President Santos and just about every other world leader were on television before the day was over, giving nearly identical speeches about the fall of Talon Tasmania. The Jaeger's core was still in meltdown, the desperate cleanup still under way, and people in Ecuador were still running for their lives from the radiation - and dying when they couldn't get away fast enough.

It annoyed Tendo sometimes to hear the press only harping on the two Jaeger pilots. Then he looked at the Beckets, the Hassans, and Steph and Kennedy, and thought he was glad.

It was hard to look at them during the President's speech.

_"Two years ago, brilliant scientists and engineers from around the globe gave the human race hope in the form of the Jaeger Program. Since then, the heroic pilots and support crews of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps have stood at the front lines against the strangest, most terrible enemy that the world has ever seen._

_On this day, February 5, 2017, two of those heroes gave their lives in the line of duty. Miguel Blanco and Maria Lopez-Blanco, citizens of Argentina, pilots of the Jaeger Talon Tasmania, fought to the very end against the kaiju that invaded another innocent city. The United States of America joins every nation of the world in saluting their courage, and bowing our heads in their memory. They were married only two months ago. I offer my deepest condolences to the people of Argentina, to the Lopez and Blanco families, and to every city and nation that has stood under their protection._

_Thank you, Maria and Miguel, on behalf of America and all humanity. God bless you, and may you rest in peace._"

"Dammit," someone muttered, and there was a lot of sniffling going on in the war room. Raleigh Becket was leaning forward against the conference table, rubbing his eyes, and Yancy had a hand on his shoulder.

A message went around electronically to all personnel: the PPDC memorial protocol. _Hell, I didn't even know those two and I'm never going to keep it together. _"Brace yourselves, guys, it only gets worse."

They'd all been issued dress uniforms once they signed on as permanent officers of the Corps, and joked about holding a ball. Tendo wondered bitterly if the brass had always realized this was what the real purpose was. Black armbands were distributed before the flag-lowering ceremony, and people helped each other put them on with nary a wisecrack to be heard.

He did keep it together at the formal proceeding, but God, it was depressing. He tried to make his mind blank, to not remember K-Day or Yeye or all the memorials in the aftermath of that and every attack since, to not consider what a microcosm this was of the thousands upon thousands of people who'd died since it all started.

The newbie Rangers reported that the Engineering crews were taking it hard. Talon Tasmania had been one of the Mark I Jaegers built here. Miguel Blanco and Maria Lopez had been pilots in the Argentine Navy, part of the iconic "first class" of the Academy along with the Gages. They had helped train the Tunaris and most of the Mark II pilots, helped establish the Lima Shatterdome, then cheerfully accepted the assignment to defend the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean.

Rumor had it that they had barely known each other before Argentina sent its delegation to the PPDC. But they'd been the only pair from their home country to meet the physical standards set for potential Jaeger pilots, and being from a tango-loving culture, they'd danced for fun.

Maybe that was all it had taken to make them drift compatible. By the time Talon was launched in late 2015, everyone in the Corps had known they were in love.

They'd been the first pilots to make their Jaeger dance. The PPDC brass had shit kittens and reprimanded them when videos of _that _training run hit YouTube. But only a week later, Talon Tasmania had taken down the kaiju Digonek in Vladiovostok. The majority of the Corps had decided that the dancing must have brought them good luck.

The fact that their first kill had been on Valentine's Day 2016 had only added to the mythos. Maria Lopez had been wearing an engagement ring in the post-battle media appearances, and they'd married during holiday leave in Argentina.

Now they were dead. Not fair.

_Not that any part of life on Earth with kaiju has ever been fair. _

Talon Tasmania had been assigned to Australia and New Zealand, so those countries led the memorial ceremony. Then their military bands played the Argentine national anthem while the staff of every PPDC facility around the world stood at attention at the coordinated time to the lowering of the flags. Then many of the local governments played their own tributes.

Tendo had always hated _Taps_, and he hated it even more today.

Marshall Gagnon called a personnel assembly late that night after making another address to the Academy. "We are going to lose people in action," he informed them, directing his remarks very much to those of non-military background. "Those of us who have worn a uniform before have had to face this sad truth, and if there is one thing that these past four years have taught us, it is that the kaiju are as indiscriminate and merciless as any natural or unnatural disaster. There is no dissuading them, only the effort to prepare, to learn, and refine our techniques to save as many lives as possible. So far the death toll of Guayaquil is at fourteen PPDC personnel, sixty-one local military, and three hundred thirteen civilians. It will rise before it is over." He paused to let that sink in, seeming to take note of everyone who flinched.

"You all have a choice about being here. If you want to resign and return to civilian life, you're free to do so. No one will be shot. But don't think for an instant that leaving this base will spare you from what is outside. And do question for the rest of your lives if by risking yourselves, you could have helped save others."

* * *

><p><em>March 2017…<em>

Nobody left.

The final death toll of Vaulimi's attack was nearly two thousand civilians, including the people in the Marshall Islands and French Polynesia who'd had no Jaeger to protect them and almost nowhere to run. The PPDC lost sixty-four personnel; the first responders from other militaries on the scene gave a hundred twenty lives.

Routine and normalcy gradually resumed, and the horror of Vaulimi's attack faded just as the others did. The nuclear waste and Kaiju Blue was cleaned up, the dead were buried, the flags went back to full height.

Solar Prophet came up to Anchorage for a brief refit after the Guayaquil engagement. Prophet's pilots, a Peruvian couple named Alex Quispe and Sunya Flores, brought several boxes of Argentine wine, a gift from the government to the PPDC. All the Rangers on base and the engineers and trainers who'd known the Blancos held a little wake in the Assembly Building. There were so many people that it was just a medicine cupful of wine again, but they all drank a toast to fallen heroes.

Afterward, Anchorage bade a reluctant farewell to Vic and Gunnar Tunari as Coyote Tango returned to her post in Tokyo. Stephanie and Kennedy decided they would have to take up the Tunaris' mantle as resident dancing Rangers, and the off-duty tournaments resumed.

A new group of candidates came through the first cut of Class 2017-A at the Academy: seventy-two. Among them were a few familiar faces: the EMT woman who'd come to Raleigh's aid after his Final Spar left him unconscious (Raleigh didn't remember her, but Yancy did), and the Inuit woman who ran over him in the hallway on Groundhog Day.

Gipsy Danger was being readied for a July launch to coincide with the opening of the LA Shatterdome. The Gages were outraged at the notion that the Beckets might get to reside in sunny California with Yankee Star's crew while they were stuck in the Icebox, much to everyone's amusement. A large group of Class 2016-B veterans put in requests to join Gipsy's strike group and support crew, to Raleigh and Yancy's gratification.

By the end of March, they were out on the proving grounds testing Gipsy's paces nearly every day, doing the same Bushido drills they'd been taught in Academy in their Jaeger. Class 2016-B had watched Eden Assassin, Coyote Tango, and Yankee Star on those practices any chance they got. It gave Raleigh a thrill, knowing another group of future Rangers were standing outside watching them just as they'd once done.

Most of the transfer requests were granted; the PPDC still had more positions available than applicants, and they were constantly poaching personnel from other military branches. Brandon Pines, the Air Force Pave Hawk pilot from Monterey who'd been cut during pons testing, signed with his crew from Los Angeles Air Force Base on as one of Gipsy Danger's rescue/recovery pilots.

Antwan Ferrier ended up one of their main personnel coordinators/cat herders, and when they started having full-on deployment test runs, was heard yelling "Muster drill, muster drill!" into the comms.

"_Muster _drill?!" Raleigh demanded, passing him on the way to the elevator with Yancy.

"Shuddup, I used to work on cruise ships!" Before long, they all were calling it a muster drill, and someone made Antwan a fisherman's cap with _S.S. Gipsy Danger_ and her emblem stitched on the front. Everybody wanted one after that, but Raleigh and Yancy were informed they weren't allowed to take possession of their bomber jackets until launch day.

* * *

><p><em>April 2017…<em>

Midway through the spring, there was a buzz around Kodiak because some enterprising reporters had taken a very close look at the arrangement of the Corps personnel during the public memorial - and worked out who the up-and-coming Rangers were.

Raleigh came up to the conn-pod for a test run one day, only to be greeted by a bunch of wicked grins. "Morning, Sunshine!" said Priya Katwal.

That was... odd, but Priya like to harass them, so he just grinned and ignored it. Then Yancy came in. "Morning, Strawberry!"

"Huh?!"

The whole pod engineering crew broke up laughing. Then someone patched into the comm - for the whole Assembly Building. Of course, it was Tendo, reading out loud with glee. _"'The pilots of America's newest Jaeger could not be a more perfect matches for the ideal image of apple pie and the Fourth of July.'"_

"The HELL?!" Raleigh blurted, while Yancy imitated a fish.

"I didn't think you looked that much like fireworks," hooted Priya.

_"_Shut up! Don't interrupt my dramatic reading! _'It took us several weeks of investigation to dig up the names of the newly-minted Rangers: Yancy and Raleigh Becket, sons of an Alaska hydraulic engineer and a French national, locals from the land that gave us dog sledding, polar bears, and Sarah Palin.'"_

"Oh, _God_!" Yancy groaned and buried his face in his hands.

"Wait, it gets better! _'Pay attention, Jaeger Flies: these men are gorgeous!'"_

"WOOOO! YEOW!" came the commentary from somewhere downstairs.

_"'Yancy, 21, stands six feet of sculpted muscle, Adonis good looks, and strawberry blond hair! His little brother, Raleigh, 18, is a five-foot-eleven sunshine blond with a smile that will be slaying teen hearts around the world by this summer!"_

"Awwww!_'_"

"I think that's supposed to mean you're pretty, Baby Becket!" someone yelled.

"Kill me, Yance, kill me now."

_"'Almost nothing is known about the new Jaeger or its pilots, but enthusiasts are waiting with baited breath _- and for the record, they spelled it like fish bait - _and all the ladies who love a man in uniform should turn their eyes towards the Land of the Midnight Sun in a few months. The launch of America's first Mark III Jaeger will also catapult these breathtaking new pilots into the spotlight. That day can't come fast enough!"_

"April Fool's Day was two weeks ago!" Yancy protested weakly, only to have Priya dance up to him brandishing a teen magazine.

"Read it and weep, Strawberry!"

"Oh, we'll be weeping, all right," Raleigh muttered. "Hell." The picture of them was a rather fuzzy shot from his high school graduation, when he'd been about an inch shorter and... had he put on that much bulk?! He could not have looked more dorky - good thing it wasn't a yearbook shot.

"I think we should put that on the back of all their drive suits so we know whose is whose: Strawberry and Sunshine!"

They ran for the stairs, only to find Bruce and Trevin Gage lying in wait. "Welcome to the heart-throb club, boys, there's no escape!" And they were manhandled back into the drive suit room to do the whole test with everyone ribbing them over the comms and reading that purple prose out loud over and over again. "Don't laugh too hard, girls, your day is coming!" The Gages admonished the Hassans, Steffie, and Kennedy.

The day after that exercise in mortification, Marshall Gagnon introduced them to their new Crew Liaison and Public Relations Adviser. "Gentlemen, this is Carolina Olivares. Ordinarily she wouldn't be coming on board until closer to launch, but since the media has pictures of you and the bit in their teeth, we need to get on top of it."

Raleigh regarded her curiously. He'd imagined some suited-up stuffed shirt who looked and acted like Pentecost and was allergic to people having fun on company time (or ever). Instead, they had a middle-aged Hispanic woman with a sly grin, looking them up and down. "Marshall Pentecost warned me you two would be a handful."

"Hey, we didn't know anything about that article!" Yancy protested.

"I believe you, but you're trouble. I can see it in your eyes." She didn't seem that bothered by it. "And it happens to all the pilots. I was doing public relations with the PPDC from almost Day One. That drift of yours turns you all into class clowns." She looked at Marshall Gagnon. "Have they got their demerit for Jaeger-dancing yet? No? You may as well just give it to them now; they're going to do it."

Gagnon looked from her to Raleigh and Yancy, and heaved a sigh. "I'll just put it on your record and get it over with. No twerking."

"Oh, Marshall, now you've done it. They won't be able to resist!"

"No twerking!"

Raleigh felt a dazed laugh burst out, and even Yancy's lips were starting to twitch. (They'd investigated that very possibility, only to conclude, much to everyone's disappointment, that Gipsy's lower back didn't have the flexibility. Stephanie and Kennedy had high hopes for accomplishing it in the Mark IV. For Gipsy's dance move, Tendo was advocating fiercely for disco, and they actually had a few on the list.)

Gagnon departed in defeat, and Raleigh was almost sorry to see him go. He wasn't sure he wanted to be left alone in a room with this crazy woman who already had them on the defensive. He murmured to Yancy in French, _"She is not what I was expecting from the PR people._"

"_Better or worse?"_ she asked in French.

Now Yancy lost it and started laughing as Raleigh went bright red. "I love it when that happens!"

"Except when you do it," Raleigh grumbled.

"_I _haven't done it since I was fifteen, kiddo; not my fault you haven't learned not to talk in front of people! Just smack him if he's a brat, that's what I tell everybody," he told Carolina.

"I'm afraid you come as a pair, my dear, so that counts as standing permission for yourself," she replied. "Especially when you bully your brother!"

"I don't bully him!" Yancy exclaimed.

_"__Bullshit!_" Raleigh coughed.

"Stop that before I put you both in separate corners. Now let me explain what my job is. Yes, public relations, but also inter-department relations. Starting six months ago, you two have demands on you from every corner of the PPDC, and thanks to the paparazzi, that is now going to increase to the rest of the world. You'll never be able to give everyone everything what they want from you. No human being can. I will be helping coordinate your schedules, especially once the public appearances start. That stupid article is just a taste of what's coming."

"Geez, I'd almost managed to forget about that," Yancy groaned. "We got a dramatic reading from the support team during tests."

She laughed. "Also par for the course. They'll get bored with it… eventually." Now Raleigh dropped his face into his hands, but she went on, "My job is _not _to follow you around telling you what to do or what not to do or make your lives miserable. I'm certainly not here to turn you into an image for the PPDC – regardless of what some of your superiors would like."

"Really?" Raleigh asked doubtfully.

"Really. You're young; don't you read celebrity news? Everyone breaks character eventually and reveals what's behind the curtains. If the Academy, the Corps, school, and your family's child-rearing haven't made you into good men, then it's a lost cause by now."

Raleigh cringed. "Ouch."

She fixed him with a stare as if trying to see into his head, and a sly smile. "Have a little faith in yourself, Raleigh Becket. I don't think many bad people make it this far."

He felt a smile tugging his mouth again. "I thought we were trouble."

"Oh, you are. Lots of good people are hell-raisers under the skin. Look at the Gages. Twenty-eight years of military upbringing and training, but after two years of drifting, they've turned into the Weasley twins!" Now Raleigh was laughing. She finished, "And they've admitted to me that they're happier than they've ever been."

"You know them?"

"I do; I started as a volunteer after the Seoul conference. I worked in human resources and public relations for the Judge Advocate General for nearly thirty years, now I do the same for the Jaeger program." Olivares winked. "Marshall Pentecost recommended this assignment to me. He said you needed a firm hand, never imagining that's not my secret. Now be gentlemen and introduce me to some of your support team."

"That's for me," Yancy said. "This kid's no gentleman." He got his knuckles rapped.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Mid-Week: **__Our heroes continue preparing for the summer launch of Gipsy Danger, and another team from Class 2016-B is introduced to their Jaeger. But Yancy is having a hard time facing the painful lesson the Rangers have been given by Talon Tasmania, and it leads to another quarrel between the Becket brothers only weeks before launch in __**Chapter Seventeen: Through Nature To Eternity!**_

**PLEASE remember to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Gipsy Danger's Crew

Carolina Olivares: Team Liaison/Public Relations Representative, handles internal and external non-combat-related scheduling, public appearances, etc for the Jaeger team and the Rangers. Late 60s, Mexican-American from San Francisco, widow who came out of retirement to join PPDC after K-Day.

Antwan Ferrier: Strike troop Personnel Coordinator, leads a team of Gipsy's support personnel. Jamaican national, age 39, former cruise ship steward who witnessed Kaiceph's attack on Cabo San Lucas.

Brandon Pines: Rescue/Recovery chopper pilot, age 30, American from Monterey, CA. Lost most of his colleagues in combat with Trespasser on K-Day.

Cady Spencer: LOCCENT technician (along with Tendo Choi), mid 20s, Filipino-American from Portland, Oregon

Christian Warner: Drivesuit technician. Age 25, African-American from Atlanta, Georgia, join PPDC with his younger sister, Chloe.

Rangers

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Indonesian-Australian sisters, ages 26 and 24, who graduated the Academy along with the Beckets and are expected to be assigned to an Australian Jaeger. (Which one? You can probably work it out from the canon sources, but if not, wait and see!)

Miguel Blanco and Maria Lopez-Blanco: Rangers of the Mark I Jaeger, Talon "Tango" Tasmania. Late 20s. Argentinian Navy pilots, they discovered their drift compatibility by dancing, and started the Ranger tradition of making their Jaeger dance. Married shortly after Christmas 2016. Tragically, they were the first Rangers to die in battle only a few months after their wedding.

Alejandro "Alex" Quispe and Sunya Flores: Rangers of the Mark II Jaeger, Solar Prophet of Peru. Early 30s, Peruvian/Quechan couple who joined PPDC and graduated in second "class" of pilots in late 2015.

Other PPDC Personnel

Marshall Vincent Gagnon: commanding officer of Jaeger Academy, PPDC Proving Grounds, and Anchorage Shatterdome, successor of Stacker Pentecost. Canadian Air Force officer, age 50.

Priya Katwal: Jaeger Engineering officer, primary designer/testing engineer for conn-pods. Mid-50s, NASA veteran, American of Indian ancestry.


	17. Through Nature To Eternity

_**Author's Notes:**__ If anyone's interested, my Tumblr (3Fluffies) now has a master list of the original characters in this fic series, including more detailed backstories. Thank you all as always for the wonderful feedback! Please also note that my knowledge of the rules of Greco-Roman wrestling/grappling is limited to reading Wikipedia.  
><em>

_**Geek Culture Notes:**__ The quote Raleigh gives Yancy at the end of this chapter (as well as the title of the next chapter) is from George R. R. Martin's __A Song of Ice and Fire__/Game of Thrones series._ _As you can probably guess by now, __I firmly believe the PPDC is full of nerds, Beckets included_.

**Chapter Seventeen: Through Nature To Eternity**

_PPDC Jaeger Academy and Assembly Building, Kodiak Island, Alaska…_

_April 2017…_

The new PR woman was so adept at handling the Beckets that Tendo and the rest of the crew were in awe. "Is this the part where we find out you've got boys their age?" Antwan suggested.

"Actually, no. I have three daughters, all older than them. Two granddaughters. Two sons-in-law, but that's all."

Cady won the prize for being the most tactless. "Wow, I'd have only pegged you for my mother's age."

"_Dude!_" hissed Tendo, appalled.

To Cady's credit, he went scarlet and muttered, "Sorry, that came out all wrong."

Luckily for all concerned, Carolina Olivares had a good sense of humor. "My oldest granddaughter is eleven," she replied with mock-aloofness. "I retired in 2010."

"Wow!" This time it was Stephanie who had to pry her foot out of her mouth. "And you came back out after K-Day? Just patriotism?"

"More or less. I lived most of my life in San Francisco."

That got everyone quiet again, like it often did as people looked at the shadows hanging over each other. Tendo wordlessly raised a hand. _Me too. _She got the message.

"Were you close on K-Day?" asked Antwan cautiously.

"Not as close as we might have been; we lived in Sunset District. But we'd gone to Point Reyes with the girls before school started again, and that's where we were when the quake hit. We came out the other side with the clothes on our backs and our lives. An embarrassment of riches," she murmured dryly. "So, of course, I returned to the service. I couldn't fail to repay a blessing like that."

"I don't blame you for that," said Kennedy. Antwan and many of the others were nodding.

There were other changes going on in the Jaeger Program that spring. The tacticians and strategists spending a lot of time analyzing Vaulimi's attack, along with the engineers and pons experts, trying to figure out what had gone wrong for Talon Tasmania and how to prevent it from happening again. Tendo, Cady, Indra, and the other LOCCENT trainees got their first hands-on experience in a post-engagement investigation... and really wished they could have cut their teeth on one that hadn't caused so many fatalities. It was damn depressing.

"We're shifting our tactics towards group deployment along with multi-Jaeger coverage for each Shatterdome's region," Marshall Gagnon informed them. "Whenever possible, backup needs to be available and fully-deployed at the start of the engagement. So one Jaeger will be designated as point, but at least one more will be already deployed and in easy distance."

* * *

><p><em>May 25, 2017…<em>

On the day of the Sydney Shatterdome's opening ceremony, Dr. Schoenfeld and Marshall Gagnon called the Hassans out of the after party. Everyone grinned and nudged each other as they headed for Schoenfeld's office. Raleigh and Yancy refilled their drinks and announced, "Here's to first impressions."

"Cheers!"

When Devi and Susanti returned, they were as quiet and distracted as Yancy and Raleigh had been on Christmas Eve. "Start of a beautiful friendship?" Yancy asked them.

"More like the love of my life," breathed Suze, getting a chorus of "aww" from everyone. Then she mock-pouted, "But a long-distance relationship until he's ready for pilot testing. One more month."

"Oh, so this one's a he," Raleigh remarked. Dr. Schoenfeld was returning with Dr. Lightcap and Captain D'onofrio, so he asked, "Can we get the inside scoop on his name?"

The Hassans looked to Schoenfeld for permission, and seeing his nod, Devi said, "Vulcan Specter."

"Vulcan? As in 'live long and prosper?'"

Suze swatted Tendo for that. "Vulcan as in the god of _volcanoes_, you dweeb! Because his incendiary is lava."

"Seriously?!" exclaimed Kennedy, looking from her to Schoenfeld.

The engineer laughed. "Not exactly, but it does look a lot like it should be coming out of a volcano. Especially when you use it underwater. He'll launch sometime this fall."

"I thought the next Mark III was going to be China's," said Tendo in surprise.

"China's candidates are this class," Dr. Lightcap explained. "But after… losing Talon, we need to get Australia more coverage as soon as possible." She gave the Hassans a quick smile, then left abruptly with Captain D'onofrio at her heels.

The D'onofrios were another pair who'd been devastated by the Blancos' death. Dr. Lightcap had been quiet and withdrawn since returning from Hong Kong to start testing and training Class 2017-A on the pons and simulator, and Cap stuck closer to her than ever. They dodged the media more than ever too, trying to evade insensitive questions about how it felt to lose the first team of Rangers.

"Most of the first pilots were hand-picked and taught by the D'onofrios and their support crew one-on-one," Carolina explained to Gipsy's crew. "When they discovered that drift compatibility isn't universal, they had to find people with some sort of relationship. Lieutenant D'onofrio had remembered Trevin Gage, a fellow pilot who had a twin. Min and Jing Li were known by the senior Chinese liaison to the PPDC, the Hansens by the Australian military, the Jessops by the Japanese. Relatives, married couples, long-time friends, officers who'd worked together, they are the pilots of the Mark Is. And they trained many of the Mark II pilots themselves, in skills they were still in the process of mastering."

"Yeah. For Doc and Cap, it's gotta be like... losing your kids," Cady mused.

"We knew it would happen," Brandon Pines told them. "This is war, guys. It'll happen again."

They knew he was speaking from experience. The US Air Force had taken massive losses on K-Day, and Brandon had been among a minority of pilots from Travis Air Force Base to survive direct combat against Trespasser. Yancy could see him staring off into space sometimes, with the same look in his eyes as Tendo, Antwan, and anyone else who'd been at ground zero of an attack. K-Day and its aftermath had killed four members of his family and most of his close colleagues and friends.

"Do you ever get used to it?" Raleigh asked him quietly.

"I didn't say that." Brandon studied his cards as if they were Tarot, not poker, and he could see the future. Or maybe the past. "Even when you don't know them... when they're one of us, it stings. If you're in action, you can keep distracted. If not, you just... keep moving. Stay on your mission – the overall mission, I mean. It's a way of honoring them. I think it's the only way."

"In the next two years, we're supposed to have over thirty Jaegers in service," said Carolina. "The kaiju attack every few months, and the technology is still developing. There will be deaths in action. There will even be accidents." Everyone grimaced. "Brandon and Marshall Gagnon are right; that's a fact of life, even when we're not at war, and we are."

* * *

><p><em>June 2017…<em>

Raleigh didn't want to dwell on bad possibilities, and for the most part, it wasn't too hard to distract himself in the weeks and months after Guayaquil. However, he found out the hard way that Yancy _was_ dwelling on it… more and more as time went by, not less.

First, it was just flashes of Vaulimi's attack in the drift. That wasn't out of the ordinary; they were analyzing the hell out of every attack. But what Yancy kept thinking about wasn't technical; it was an image of what it must have been like in Talon's conn-pod.

_Yance! Shit!_ he thought, almost flattening virtual Gipsy while trying to dodge an attack that was only in Yancy's mind.

_Sorry. _

They didn't wind up dead in that sim, but it was a closer call than they'd had in months, and one of the poorest runs since they were assigned to Gipsy. Worse still was what Raleigh caught from his brother at the end of their handshake: _Worse ways to go down than together in a Jaeger_.

"Seriously?!" he hissed aloud as they powered the simulator down.

"Rals, chill! It's just another random thought. You're not supposed to dwell on it."

"And you're not supposed to be thinking like that!" Raleigh protested. "Don't turn it around on me; that's your freaking rabbit!"

Yancy heaved an obnoxious sigh as they wrestled themselves out of the rigs. "And you're the one who keeps chasing it! We can't police our own brains _or_ each other's, remember?" He stalked out of the sim pod, but as Raleigh followed, they were found not only the instructors, but their shrinks waiting.

_Oh, wonderful. I could not be less in the mood for this_.

"Everything all right, gentlemen?"

"Fine," he muttered.

There had to be a class that Psych Analysts took on how to raise their eyebrows on cue. "Wrong answer," said the team leader.

Raleigh glowered at the wall, but Yancy knew the right answer. "We'll deal with it, okay?"

"Do. This is your fourth run where you've followed that drift pattern. One more, and we have to report it. "

And then a committee of superiors and headshrinkers would decide whether the Beckets should be grounded for instability. _Great. Just great_. "We'll deal with it," he muttered, and trailed after Yancy back to quarters.

Once back in their rooms, Yancy rounded on him like it was all his fault. "You need to quit - "

"You're not supposed to THINK like that, man!" For the first time in... probably years, Raleigh took Yancy by surprise; he practically screamed it. Even in the prelude to that brawl in December, he hadn't actually shouted. Not at Yancy. "When did you become a fucking fatalist?!"

Yancy sputtered for a couple of seconds, thrown by the explosion, then rallied and threw up his hands. "It's not fatalism, it's realism, kid!" He gestured to the black memorial bands that they'd hung carefully above the wall calendar. "Did you completely miss what happened? We have to acknowledge it."

"We _did_ acknowledge it! You're obsessing over it!"

"_You_ are being a drama queen!" That was low. "Or maybe just a wimp if you can't even admit that we're in a kind of high risk line of work." That was lower.

Raleigh just barely caught himself from taking a swing. He had to end this conversation before he did. "So how far you gonna take it to prove you're right? Get us grounded for instability or excess downs in the sim before we ever make it to launch? Ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophesy? Maybe I'd rather try NOT to get us killed!"

He threw the door open and wrenched away when Yancy tried to stop him. "Oh yeah, go running off to sulk again, very mature!" his brother sneered.

"Go play Debbie Downer to somebody else. Doom and gloom doesn't make you mature." He grabbed his gear and headed for the gym. This time, Yancy went in the opposite direction. _Good_.

The psychs were lurking like wolves in the forest from a fairytale. A couple of them actually used the pretense of working out while Raleigh was in the weight room; he wanted to snap at them to just take notes. They might as well have been taking his picture coming in and out of the shower.

Worse, it wasn't just the psychs. Somebody must have heard him and Yance, because _everybody_ was shooting him side-eyes.

_Is this really how it ends? A couple months shy of deployment, we fuck it up and knock ourselves out of the running?_

He shamelessly dove for cover when he saw Carolina coming down towards the mess hall. On top of everything else, he did not want to think about PR - even if, in all fairness, she didn't actually talk about PR much. Dealing with her had been a lot easier than he'd anticipated; she actually seemed to realize the Rangers were human. She treated him and Yancy like equals.

Now he felt a pang of honest-to-god guilt just at the thought of how disappointed she'd be. Everyone on the crew, everyone in the whole damn Corps was looking forward to launch. "_You two are a heartbeat away from active duty_," Pentecost had said in December.

That had been a lot of heartbeats. Now they actually had a launch date, and - someone was coming.

He looked over his shoulder and saw Bruce Gage coming from the opposite direction. _Aw, shit. It's the Ya-Ya Brotherhood_.

But Bruce didn't haul him off for a lecture, just gave him a casual nod as he went by. He murmured, "Remember, there's a brass-sanctioned way to resolve things." Raleigh blinked, but Bruce kept going, and around the corner, he shouted, "_Abuela!_ How long have you been up north!"

"Bruce Gage, I have been here for days and you haven't come to say hello to me! Now where's your brother - wait, show me. Show me!"

"We are _never_ gonna live that down, are we? Look, you can barely see it."

It dawned on Raleigh that they were talking about Bruce's scar. _"Deal with it the way the brass allows: in the Kwoon. Go at it. And that way you don't have to explain to the man in charge how you hit him in the chest plate with your face."_

"_It was the PR guys who were ready to fry us. Imagine trying to spin that_!"

Maybe they'd meant "PR guys" in a non-gendered sense. Something told him that under all that grandmotherly good humor, Carolina had her flash points. He felt another pang, hearing Carolina laughing and teasing Bruce as they walked off, just like she did Raleigh and Yancy. She'd said she knew the Gages.

_"You don't need to draw blood to make your point, and you'd be surprised how much sparring works stuff out."_

Well, he'd run, he'd lifted weights, he'd drilled himself backwards and forwards with Bushido, and still felt ready to fly apart from nervous energy. What did he have to lose?

So he turned around and went looking for his brother. He eventually found him outside, ironically, in almost the same place where Raleigh had talked to the Gage twins six months earlier. It was finally full dark - at one in the morning - and the Northern Lights were out. Yancy was staring up at them. _Being all whimsical and depressed. Maybe he'll start writing poetry or something_. Raleigh sighed.

Yancy turned, and the look on his face wasn't anything like in December. It was more like back when Raleigh and Jazmine were fighting, and Raleigh'd done something to "escalate it" as Yancy liked to put it (rather than simply responding to whatever vicious thing she'd done, which always seemed to get overlooked.)

_Fine, be like that_. "Kwoon," he said curtly. Yancy blinked. "Work it out the way the brass allows."

After a brief pause, Yancy nodded. "Okay."

They left the hanbōs in their racks in favor of straight-up grappling. Until a year ago, Raleigh hadn't been big enough to compete evenly with Yancy at Greco-Roman. _I'm not a kid anymore. Not here_, Raleigh fumed. For the first round or three, they didn't even talk, just focused rigidly on throws and locks and clinches. Neither of them had ever been champions, but they knew the rules and who scored what points.

Raleigh pinned Yancy first. He used to prefer scoring his points by throws, but for some reason, that had changed. Yance had always been good at pinning his opponents, but... his style had changed too.

After the second round, they muttered curtly about their scores. "Three points."

"That was only one, I wasn't exposed."

"Then it's one to four instead of three to four." Yancy went for a towel and finally cracked a smile. "You still win." Inside Raleigh, something cracked at that.

He pinned Raleigh next for five seconds, landing himself a bonus. Getting held that long used to piss Raleigh off... but now it didn't. It was like being hugged. Maybe if it were anyone other than Yancy, he'd still get frustrated.

A round later, he got the hold bonus. He'd never managed to pin Yancy that long before in his life. When the skies were lightening again, Raleigh was ahead on matches and points, and Yance didn't step back to the start. "Man, we're gonna pay for this in the morning."

"No kidding." If they went to bed right now and skived off morning drills, they'd get four hours of sleep.

And Rip Van Yancy actually seemed okay with that. "Well, let's make it count, then. Come on."

They wound up at the bar off-base. It was so late (or early) that the place was nearly empty. They caught the bouncer eyeing them, but by some miracle, paying for the damage and apologizing had kept them from getting banned.

If only the TV hadn't been playing yet another sappy, drooly special report on the burgeoning Jaeger Program and harping on its first fallen heroes. Raleigh winced and turned away, but Yancy nudged him. "Rals." It was hard to look at him now. "It'll be okay. It will. Look at it."

After showing the flag-lowering ceremonies at the Shatterdomes, the story was moving on to the Academy. The largest-ever second cut class was halfway through the third term. Seven Mark III Jaegers were slated to be launched this year from six different countries. Ten Mark IVs were being built, with the first projected to launch in 2018. The Mark IVs were going to be digital, an entire new technology to work out some of the kinks from the earlier models and lower the radiation risks. The Jaegers would start fighting the kaiju in teams, and there were plans in progress for some kind of missile attack on the Breach itself.

"_The greatest goal of all would be to stop the kaiju from ever reaching this side of the Breach_," one of the geologists was saying.

"_Barring that, the Jaeger Program's goal is to one day have a zero-fatality event_," said Marshall Pentecost down in Lima.

"You think?" Raleigh asked quietly. "You think we can pull that off?"

"It's worth trying for. Every time. I wasn't being fatalist. Planet Earth's going to make it even if you and me don't, and that's okay. We're on the front lines, but it's bigger than just you and me. Hell, that's a good thing. It takes the pressure off. _'The problems of three little people don't amount to a hill o' beans in this crazy world,_'" he concluded a la Humphrey Bogart, and Raleigh finally managed to laugh again.

They were both staggering tired and groggy by the time they got back to quarters, but once in their room, Yancy hugged him. "I'll try not to dwell on it in the sims, kiddo. I'm sorry."

Raleigh gave him an answering squeeze and whispered, "_Valar morghulis,_" and they both laughed.

_You were right_, he thought, too tired to deny it and knowing Yance would catch it in the drift. _It's a possibility, not the only one either. We could get run over by a truck, buried in a blizzard. In Gipsy, maybe saving lives? Together? There are worse ways to go_.

And as long as they were in a Jaeger, then when the Beckets went down, if they went down, they'd go down together.

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming this weekend: _**_The return of Stacker Pentecost! (Uh-oh, everybody look busy!) Our favorite Marshall has some words for Rangers old and new, and change is in the air for the entire Jaeger Program in __**Chapter Eighteen: The Pack Survives**__._

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character ****Guide**

Carolina Olivares: Team Liaison/Public Relations Representative, handles internal and external non-combat-related scheduling, public appearances, etc for the Jaeger team and the Rangers. Late 60s, Mexican-American from San Francisco, widow who came out of retirement to join PPDC after K-Day.

Antwan Ferrier: Strike troop Personnel Coordinator, leads a team of Gipsy's support personnel. Jamaican national, age 39, former cruise ship steward who witnessed Kaiceph's attack on Cabo San Lucas.

Brandon Pines: Rescue/Recovery chopper pilot, age 30, American from Monterey, CA. Lost most of his colleagues in combat with Trespasser on K-Day.

Cady Spencer: LOCCENT trainee along with Tendo Choi. Filipino-American from Oregon, age 25, lost most of his mother's family to Hundun's attack on Manila.

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Indonesian-Australian sisters, ages 26 and 24, who graduated the Academy along with the Beckets. Newly assigned to Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark III.


	18. The Pack Survives

_**Author's Note:** The background info/gossip about Mexico's pilot candidates is a tidbit that was revealed by Travis Beacham's blog. The names of the Mexican Rangers weren't revealed, so I made them up. See my Tumblr, 3Fluffies, under the tag "generation k" for some of my headcanons and the stories and characters I've invented for this fic series. Thank you all once again for so many wonderful reviews, and please keep them coming!_

**Chapter Eighteen: The Pack Survives**

_PPDC Jaeger Academy and Assembly Facility, Kodiak Island, Alaska…_

_June 2017…_

They did skive off both drills and the workouts after, and cancelled their afternoon sim, and managed to squeeze in six hours of sleep. The workout they'd taken care of, and then some, but the fightmasters were going give them a congenial, mild-mannered beatdown in the Rangers' evening practice session.

In lieu of the sim, they pored over the new Tactics material for the group assault plans. "Can we do a double sim now?" Raleigh mused.

"Not yet, I don't think… the simulator pod only takes one team at a time…" Yancy yawned and pondered it. "But sometimes instructors are logged on from other locations. To create the virtual environment with two Jaegers, you'd just need another pod logged on... Hell, we could do it remotely from any other Dome."

"That's one of many works in progress."

They looked up from their table, then jumped up: it was Marshall Pentecost. "Sir."

He looked them up and down. Yancy wondered what he'd heard. Well, with luck, he could see that the Beckets' latest shouting match had gone from quarters to Kwoon to the same bar with no bodily or property injury.

"At ease, Rangers." That was a good sign, but Yancy could feel his face getting hot and saw Raleigh flushing in the corner of his eye. "I'm giving an address this afternoon to the candidates for this class. Current Rangers and all Ranger Ready teams are also asked to attend."

Yancy nodded. "Certainly, sir."

"It's on the topic of conflict resolution."

_Ouuuch. _Now he knew his face was flaming, and he couldn't bear to even glance Raleigh's way. "We've... resolved the, uh, matter - " Yancy started to mumble, but to his surprise and relief, Pentecost took pity on them.

"So I hear, but this is a subject of concern to the entire Jaeger Program - and a presentation has been in the works for several weeks."

Well, that was something. Raleigh'd told him the origin story of Bruce Gage's scar. Maybe the Beckets weren't the only pair who ignited the Corps gossip chain when they fought.

As everyone gathered in the assembly hall, Yancy and Raleigh stood a little closer together than strictly necessary, laughing and joking to get the message across: _It's all good, problem solved, nothing to see here, move on. _

They got to scope out Class 2017-A in a group setting. Less than a week from the end of Term 3, the general consensus was that barring a massive blowup, the six pairs still remaining in contention would all make Ranger Ready.

"That's quite a bump from three teams at a time," Yancy murmured to Captain D'onofrio.

"Tell me about it. Caitlin's bouncing off the walls," D'onofrio replied. Yancy grinned. Among other things, if the new class could get her mind off grief for Talon Tasmania and the Blancos, that was a plus. Her husband went on, "It doesn't hurt that some of the governments have been running their own 'academy prep' recruiting course, trying to get their own nationals to be ready for the first cut and some even pre-tested for the second."

"Wow," Raleigh eyed the candidates. "Kinda surprises me there aren't more in line, then."

"Sim training is still a struggle, and even basic drift compatibility doesn't always translate into getting through the stresses of combat. Remember what I told you about Mexico? They got eleven men through the first cut, but only Daniel and Andrés over there made the second. And despite not having prep before enlisting, they're top of the class so far," D'onofrio added.

"Nice!" Raleigh hissed, grinning broadly.

Steffie poked Yancy from his other side. "And have you heard the really interesting bit about the Mexicans?" He shook his head, and she whispered, "They were in _prison_ down there! The government let 'em out to try for the Academy. If they don't make Ranger, they have to go back."

Yancy blinked, and it was all he could do not to immediately turn and stare at the pair in question. "Seriously?" His mind raced at all the implications of that.

D'onofrio made a small, quelling motion with his hand. "Don't worry about it. There was a lot of vetting even before this Academy class, and the higher-ups know the details. Whatever it was, there was no violent crime involved. In fact, the C.O.s seem quite sympathetic to the Mexican candidates. They're still trying to negotiate officer status for the ones who failed so they don't have to go back. Marshall Pentecost wants to get them amnesty, Mexican government be damned."

Raleigh's eyebrows shot up. "Wow. That sounds like some kind of political dissension thing. Scary."

"And pathetic, if Mexico can't get its head out of its ass even after Cabo got obliterated," Yancy muttered. "Have you talked to them much?"

"I've only really seen them in Caitlin's pons lab, but she's comfortable with them. They're serious, but not quite the way the Chinese and Russians can be - I don't think either of them are military. But very level-headed in the sim."

"Kennedy and I've seen them in the Kwoon a few times," said Steph. "I think they've got that Latino machismo thing going on a little, you know, looking at us like 'what're you little cheerleader girls doing here,' but they're polite."

"What do we know about the other teams? I know we've got China, Russia, and South America," Raleigh mused, counting on his fingers. "Who else?"

"Don't call us biased, but I have to admit Caitlin and I are rooting pretty hard for the Canadians. Ilisapie over there was one of our support pilots. She's here with her cousin, Zeke."

"Hey, that's the one who ran you over in February!" Yancy laughed to Raleigh.

The pair in question caught the way the Beckets were grinning at them; the guy elbowed the woman, whose dark complexion then went distinctly reddish. Raleigh winked at her as the cheerleaders giggled. "Didn't we have a pair who were actually from Guayaquil?" whispered Suze Hassan from behind them.

"Rey and Isabel Khouri - far left. Yeah, Marshall Gagnon offered them a deferment to return if they needed to withdraw, but they decided to stay. Caitlin says their family's accounted for, thank God, but they had a rough time."

"I can imagine," Raleigh murmured, giving Yancy a pained look.

_No kidding. And we thought life threw us a few curve balls last year! _

"One of our Mark IIIs is funded jointly by Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, _and_ Columbia," D'onofrio told them. "Up until February, they were squabbling as bad as the Mexicans over pilot criteria. Now they consider it auspicious, so as long as Rey and Isabel keep up their current trend - and they're doing excellent in the sims and Brawler - they'll be a shoo-in to defend their home turf."

China had sent almost eighty recruits to this class, and ended up with one team still in the running: one of their first generation of female fighter pilots and a member of her support crew. The Russians had a pair of female cousins from Siberia, and there was also an American woman from Panama and a Costa Rican man who'd been complete strangers before enlisting.

They turned their attention from scoping out the newbies once Pentecost started talking. "All of you attending and listening to this presentation are part of a unique group of human beings. Rangers, Ranger Ready, and Ranger candidates. You are drift compatible, possessing a bond to another person unparalleled in nature. That bond has placed all of you on the front lines of our defense against the deadliest enemy this world has ever seen."

His admonitions about the bond and its importance were a lot of what Yancy and Raleigh had heard from him in December. But he did add to it, and in the end, it gave them a few more things to think about.

"This is not to say that you can never disagree or be unhappy with each other. We recognize that you're all still human, and all humans have conflict. But how you deal with conflict must take into account the role your bond plays in your duties. You're not free to approach anger and frustration in the same way that ordinary people are, because you are _not_ ordinary people."

"The first two attacks were six months apart. The last two were four months apart. They are oscillating, but there is a pattern of acceleration." Yancy felt Raleigh shiver at that, and saw some of the others doing it. "Three months have now passed since the last one, and the PPDC and all its territories are now on high alert. The next one could be tomorrow. Life does not stop, and can't stop, but none of you have the time for 'cooling off' with each other as ordinary humans do."

To Yancy's relief, what he and Raleigh had done yesterday fit into the instructions that were now coming down from the superiors: Fight it out in the Kwoon. Talk it out. Don't go to bed angry (well, that wasn't quite how they put it, but it was definitely what they meant.) Get it resolved by any and all means necessary.

Every pair in Yancy's line of sight was exchanging the same look that he knew he was exchanging with Raleigh, and he'd bet good money they were all thinking the same thoughts.

_They're right. Of course, they're right. This is bigger than just you and me. Brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, or even just friends. It's not about Yancy and Raleigh, it's about Gipsy Danger, being ready to deploy at a moment's notice. If we aren't in control of ourselves, we can't control her._

Self-discipline, Pentecost emphasized, in all things. It was a job requirement for every member of every military, but none more so than Rangers. The drift was a powerful force, and no one who experienced it went unchanged.

Was that really a bad thing? Yancy wondered, seeing Steffie and Kennedy smile at each other, and the intense looks that some of the other pairs exchanged. Not just the romantic pairs either.

By any standard, Yancy and Raleigh had been close even before enlisting. But since drifting... it was like self-consciousness eroded away, and he could admit how much he needed his brother, at a soul-deep level, and not be embarrassed or awkward. Better still, he could know Raleigh needed him. That was... definitely not a certainty that ordinary people had. And definitely not something to throw away or put in danger even if there weren't lives riding on it.

It had been horrible during their third term last winter, picking up that deep, lingering anxiety inside Raleigh that Yancy too would abandon him, just as Dad had done. Yancy had been so desperate to alleviate it, and found that no reassurance spoken or thought could do it... but he could show Raleigh that he had his own to match it. He'd feared that he'd let Raleigh down the way he'd let Jazmine down, that Raleigh would give up on him as she had, as Mom and Dad had. They never talked about it aloud, but those fears finally balanced each other out, and they could move on.

He would never give up Raleigh. Raleigh would never give up him. No matter what happened, they were in this together and always would be.

* * *

><p><em>June 9, 2017…<em>

On Graduation Day for six new teams of Rangers, the Breach opened again and spat out the biggest kaiju yet, codenamed Hammerjaw.

Team Gipsy had a full "muster drill" for pre-deployment, but once K-Watch confirmed that the kaiju was making a beeline for Japan, the western Jaegers got a stand-down order.

Once the bogey was aiming into Osaka Bay, the Chinese sent their Mark II, Silver Lion, to team up with Tacit Ronin in Osaka, with Horizon Brave waiting with Japan's Mark II, Tidal Dragon, over in Kobe.

"Have they been training together?" Raleigh asked.

"Yep," said Tendo, digging through the reports from the other LOCCENTS with Cady and Indra, as usual. "China and Japan have really been spearheading this Jaeger Strike Group movement. They have a special jurisdiction treaty signed that as soon as K-Watch pinpoints the location, Japan will send its teams to China and vice versa. They're trying to pair off the newer teams with the older ones, let the experienced guys take point, minimize danger."

"Looks like it's working for them," said Yancy, sounding very satisfied as Ronin and Lion tag-teamed to drive Hammerjaw back out of the city proper and onto the mostly-deserted grounds of the port. It was mostly Ronin in the lead, but Lion got a few shots in when the kaiju tried to evade the Mark I.

Hammerjaw managed to knock Ronin off his feet with a low sweep of his massive head into the top-heavy Jaeger's hips, making all the watchers gasp and curse. But Silver Lion was on it in a flash and pile drove the kaiju into the Yodo River, buying Ronin time to right himself. Lion had Hammerjaw up on its haunches, reminding Raleigh a lot of fighting big cats on documentaries. They were still wrangling when Ronin came back up with his blades out and skewered the kaiju through the head.

_"Again, Ronin, again!" _yelled Lion's pilots, shoving a massive fist into the kaiju's open mouth, mindless of all the teeth. "_Behind the eyes!_"

_That's it, yes!_ Raleigh's blood raced as Ronin tore into Hammerjaw's upper skull with one blade, then the other until the kaiju fell, pulling Silver Lion down with it.

"_Lion, are you all right?!" _Kaori Jessop shouted.

"_We're fine,_" one of Lion's pilots grunted. "_Right - arm - stuck_."

_"Kaiju signature is down, Tacit Ronin!" _Tokyo LOCCENT announced. "_No signature."_

Nobody quite reverted to the complete abandon of the pre-Guayaquil victory celebrations, but they did applaud and laugh as Ronin and Lion wrangled with the carcass to extract its teeth from Lion's wrist. Much Cantonese profanity followed, and Lion would probably have to get its whole arm replaced by the time they were done. But, in the end, both Jaegers stood and raised their fists to a growing throng of rejoicing civilians on the waterfront.

"Now that's what I call teamwork," said Tendo, as everyone cheered and hugged.

Marshall Gagnon and the other commanders didn't want to waste any time, and he called the Beckets and Hassans into his office that very night. "Command wants both of your teams ready for deployment by the time of your formal launch. You two are flying down to Los Angeles tomorrow to start sim training with Yankee Star - plan on commuting for a few weeks, since Gipsy Danger will still launch from here. Vulcan Specter's engineers report he's ready for test maneuvers, so you ladies are leaving for Brisbane with your support staff in two days."

Raleigh's initial elation was suddenly dampened as Susanti shot them a dismayed look. "Is this goodbye, then?"

"Hardly," said the Marshall. "Depending on the frequency and location of attacks and the status of the mechs, you'll all get the chance to work together again. Possibly even ride together as Silver Lion and Tacit Ronin just did."

Yancy grinned at the Hassans. "I think we could have each other's backs."

"Definitely," Devi agreed.

Gagnon cast a knowing look over them. "You and your crews have leave until the Beckets' departure tomorrow, so if you want to celebrate and raise a parting glass, tonight is the night to do it."

It was a little easier on Raleigh and Yancy than it was on Suze and Devi and their team. Team Gipsy would be shuttling back and forth to Anchorage at least until launch, and even after that, LA wasn't nearly as far away as Brisbane.

Some of the team staff were even more emotional than the Rangers themselves; Tendo, Cady, and Indra got a little choked up when they realized Indra would be crossing the Pacific with his cousins. Some of the other former 2016-B crowd got the evening off from their various departments and came to join the party and wish the Hassans and Beckets well.

"It's not goodbye," Raleigh insisted. "Not for any of us."

"He's right," Indra agreed. "We'll be meeting our PR liaison when we arrive, and Mrs. Olivares says there are plans for tours - western Rangers visiting the East and vice versa. Vulcan Specter launches in October, but Australia and New Zealand will need more coverage until Talon Tasmania can be replaced. We may call on old friends."

"We got you covered," Yancy promised.

"And vice versa." Devi raised her glass. "Until we meet again, to Class 2016-B."

It was a late night... and Raleigh didn't even spend it in his own bed. He scored a lot of owed favors from his brother by spending the night chastely in Devi and Suze's room - so Devi could spend the night _not _chastely in Raleigh and Yancy's.

Raleigh and Susanti played chess long into the night and did a lot of nudging and winking. They even contemplated just having a "why the hell not, you're here, and you're cute" one night stand, but decided against it (Raleigh wasn't Suze's gender preference anyway) and just went to sleep.

They went arm-in-arm to the mess hall in the morning and snickered about what the gossip chain would make of it, but who cared? However, they did insist that Tendo give Cady his money back when they saw him collecting on his winnings from the hookup pool. Good times.

"So much for no intra-class dating," Raleigh couldn't resist observing once he and Yancy were on their plane the next day.

Yancy thumped him. "Who said anything about Dev and me dating?" Raleigh laughed so hard he snorted, and his brother concluded smugly, "That was just a _very _fond farewell."

"You better be nice to me, old man. Her drift partner's promised to give me _her _opinion of _your_ performance!"

"And that's what Dev and me have in common; we're both stuck with brats for partners," Yancy mock-fumed. Raleigh just chortled.

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming Monday: _**_The Western Jaeger crews begin team training, and Team Gipsy Danger is introduced to Team Yankee Star in Los Angeles. The results are... embarrassing. Commanding officers throughout the Pacific Rim get new gray hairs, and our heroes (all of them, not just the Beckets) are forced to grow up or go extinct in __**Chapter Nineteen: The Best and the Brightest!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Indonesian-Australian sisters, ages 26 and 24, who graduated the Academy along with the Beckets. Newly assigned to Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark III.

Indra Hassan: Devi and Susanti's cousin, age 37, from Jakarta, Indonesia. LOCCENT trainee joining Vulcan Specter's crew.

Cady Spencer: Filipino-American from Oregon, age 25, training as a LOCCENT tech with Tendo and Indra, joining Gipsy Danger's crew.


	19. The Best and the Brightest

_**Author's Acknowledgement:**__ This chapter contains some heavy discussion and introspection on the issues of race, class, respect, and privilege. NOBODY is one hundred percent in the right here, and there is a lot of unreliable narration going on, especially from the Beckets' perspective. Everybody means well, but stereotypes and assumptions can color even well-intentioned people's viewpoints, and as Bruce Gage says in this chapter, a person who's grown up lacking for nothing can make ham-fisted attempts to understand what it's like for those who did grow up marginalized and impoverished. Hell, that applies to me. Maybe this chapter is rather ham-fisted in itself, but it felt wrong to not address these issues at all._

**Chapter Nineteen: The Best and the Brightest**

_Los Angeles Shatterdome…_

_June 11, 2017, one month prior to opening day…_

The crews of Yankee Star and Gipsy Danger wondered for years after if they'd been set up (and if so, who was betting how much money on what outcome.) With all the Psych Analysts in the PPDC employ reporting straight up the chain, somebody must have seen it coming.

Tendo was one of many crew members who smelled a problem from Minute One. The introductions to LA's Marshall, Ana Ramirez, went smooth enough. But Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell, while polite, definitely didn't give the welcome that a crew used to the Gages and Tunaris expected.

"Kind of standoffish, aren't they?" Cady mused as the Shatterdome tour wound to an end.

At first, Yancy and Raleigh shrugged it off. "Could be a little territorial. We're the newbies here – again."

Carolina and Yankee Star's PR Rep, Brady Harris, suggested that some of Gipsy's support crew get to know some of Yankee Star's. That was promising – at first. Team Yankee was a less varied crowd than Team Gipsy. Most of them were former Marines like their two Rangers, direct transfers in the early days of the Jaeger Program.

The pilots of America's second Jaeger tended to incite curious questions from the well-intentioned… and gross questions from the not-so-well-intentioned. Tanisha Davis of south central Los Angeles and Caleb Mitchell of Shady Point, Oklahoma could not have seemed a more unlikely pairing. "Bruce Gage was pilot for their unit in combat," Yankee's support chief explained. "They came over to the PPDC with him."

"There's got to be more to it than that if they're drift compatible," Yancy reasoned.

But she didn't elaborate, and Raleigh got a little blunt (and tactless). "Are they together?"

The woman shot him a disbelieving look. "Didn't the whole world hear Mitchell come out of the closet last year? Where were you two on the Fourth of July?"

"Getting ground into the dirt by the Jaeger Academy," Yancy retorted.

Yankee's PR rep broke in with a forced laugh. "Okay, fair enough."

Tendo was startled when he saw the two teams heading for the simulator. "Are you four sure you want to dive right into the sims?"

The quartet in question exchanged glances, then shrugs. "Sure," said Mitchell.

"How hard can teamwork be?" Raleigh agreed.

Famous last words.

Virtual Trespasser killed both Jaegers dead. And that was after Yankee shot Gipsy (twice) and Gipsy tripped Yankee and knocked the kaiju on top of her.

* * *

><p><em>PPDC Internal Network<em>

_RBecket: Online  
>SHassan: Online<em>

_RBecket: Hey, Suze, you there?_

_SHassan: Hi, Raleigh! How did your first day in LA go?_

_RBecket: OMG. This is a nightmare._

_SHassan: Uh-oh. _

_RBecket: We're on Davis and Mitchell's bad side just by being here! They HATE us!_

_SHassan: Breathe, Baby Becket, breathe. It can't be that bad._

_RBecket: It IS that bad! We got our asses kicked in the sim. _

_SHassan: You did a sim on the first day?_

_RBecket: It seemed like a good idea to see where we stood._

_SHassan: So where do you stand?_

_RBecket: Nobody could keep track of anybody else. We knocked them over, and they shot us instead of Trespasser._

_SHassan: LOL!_

_RBecket: SHUT UP!_

_GTunari: Online_

_SHassan: Hey, Gunnar, Gipsy Danger got shot by Yankee Star today!_

_GTunari: LOL!_

_RBecket: Goddamn it, Suze! Tell the whole world, why don't you?_

_SHassan: I intend to!_

_CWarner: Online_

_CWarner: You guys still up in Anchorage? It's midnight in Hawaii!_

_RBecket: STOP INVITING PEOPLE, Suze!_

_SHassan: Chloe, the Becket boys got their asses kicked by Yankee!_

_CWarner: Heard about it, Christian told me. Is it true you swung at Trespasser and hit Yankee? LOL!_

_RBecket: Offline_

_SHassan: LOL!_

_GTunari: Don't laugh too hard, Missie. You'll be trying to tag-team with Lucky Seven before the month is out, and a lot of the crews are having trouble._

_SHassan: Chloe, what did Christian say about it? Isn't he down in LA with them?_

_CWarner: He says Raleigh and Yancy think they're the shit, Davis and Mitchell don't want to admit they exist, neither one wants to follow the other's lead, and somebody must have set this up for a laugh._

_SHassan: Uh-oh. Gunnar, tag-teamed with anyone yet?_

_GTunari: Yes, Ronin and Horizon._

_SHassan: How did yours go?_

_GTunari: That's classified._

_SHassan: LOL!_

_CWarner: That bad?!_

_SHassan: Come on, Gunnar!_

_CWarner: Well?!_

_GTunari: Okay. Horizon froze us, and we kind of shot Ronin's leg off._

_CWarner: LOL!_

* * *

><p><em>Jaeger Program Command Teleconference Re: Progress on Jaeger Team Exercises…<em>

_June 19, 2017…_

A week into team training with Yankee Star and Gipsy Danger, Marshall Ana Ramirez could draw the consolation that nearly every other commanding officer was reporting an equal lack of progress. "I'd hoped to have Lucky and Vulcan bringing in a decent simulator team score by July," Sydney's Marshall, Blake Ketteridge, fumed. "At this rate, it's a long shot to get the Hassans and Hansens into the same room again."

"Didn't the Team Vulcan just arrive? What happened?!" Gagnon demanded.

"What usually happens when Scott Hansen sets eyes on a pretty young woman. Only this time it was Susanti Hassan, and Vulcan's entire bloody crew took offense."

Stacker Pentecost shot a pointed look at his Australian counterpart over the video feed. "The younger Ranger Hansen is going to cause this program a serious problem if he continues this behavior."

"I've had a word with him. He's a philanderer, but the women he pursues are all of legal age."

Ana snorted. "Yes, but he seems to take it as a challenge when they ask him to cease pursuit, and Marshall Pentecost isn't just talking about criminal charges. Do we really need a reputation as yet another military that condones harassment of female officers?"

"I'll have another word with him."

The Chinese and Japanese Shatterdome commanders were politely hiding their amusement. "After four months, all of our teams are showing improvement. There is a learning curve involved here," Tokyo's Admiral Yamamoto said patiently. "For over three years, all focus has been upon drift compatibility between two halves of one being. Learning to work as a team with another pair, without the benefit of the drift to instantly transmit thoughts is a new adjustment, or at least forcing them to re-learn."

"And like the neural load, the ego load has only increased," Pentecost sighed. He raised an eyebrow at Ana. "Has Yankee Star managed to stop shooting Gipsy Danger yet?"

"We've now gone two rounds without friendly fire, but sadly that's our record. How are Puma Real and Solar Prophet doing?"

"They've improved…somewhat. However, Diablo Intercept pulled Romeo Blue off the continental shelf during our first underwater sim."

"_And _the kaiju got away. Nor did Romeo do any better with Coyote Tango, and it's not as if those two crews have trouble getting along outside the simulator. My god, if I hear one more repetition of 'why are you blaming us,' I will not be responsible for my actions," Gagnon groaned.

"Obviously, you need to revisit your strategy," said Yamamoto. "The clear policy directives on Ranger conflict resolution have made great strides in improving crew performance. Perhaps we should expand that to teams interacting with each other."

"We've tried that!" the Australian protested. "Sparring just leads to the Hassans and Hansens trying to kill each other."

"Sparring isn't the only test of compatibility," Yamamoto pointed out. "Doesn't the Academy train the teams to drill in unison? Not against each other but in mirror image?"

Pentecost and Gagnon nodded. Ana mused, "At this point, I'll try anything. I'll pull them off the simulators entirely for a few days, although that will have both teams even more agitated."

Pentecost gave her a weary half-smile. "You have one big gun available to call on, Marshall Ramirez." She frowned. "We know there's one Ranger that both of your teams will definitely listen to."

* * *

><p><em>Los Angeles Shatterdome…<em>

_June 21, 2017, twenty days prior to opening…_

Bruce Gage wondered exactly who he was supposed to be having the Come to Jesus talk with in LA – and whether Marshall Ramirez had seen how abysmal Romeo's team exercises had gone so far when she asked for him. But orders were orders, and even if it hadn't been an order, he'd have gone as a favor to both the Beckets and his pre K-Day comrades.

_Somebody in the Western Hemisphere ought to not completely suck at group ops. _He and Trevin could use a break, after ten days of getting their ass handed to them with nearly every partner they attempted. How pathetic.

He decided to start with Team Yankee.

Combat deployment, whether against kaiju or human insurgents, left a mark that no one ever forgot. The casual observer might not have sensed it when Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell shot to their feet and saluted as Bruce Gage came into their drive suit room, but all the veterans on staff did as he returned their salute. "Lieutenant on deck!" one of the sticklers announced.

"At ease," Bruce told them. "It's Ranger now, that's all."

Caleb smiled; Tanisha didn't, but she told him, "Good to see you, sir."

"And you." He gave them a sly look. "So, how are you treating the new kids?" The temperature dropped, and everyone avoided his eyes. "Yeah, I heard."

Yankee's support chief, Penelope Jefferson, was another veteran of their deployment days. She stepped forward with a scowl. "With respect, sir, it's not their fault. The Beckets are a couple of arrogant yahoos who think combat's a video game."

_Military versus civilian. Check. _Outwardly, he kept a neutral expression. "How've they been to you?"

Caleb and Tanisha exchanged a look. "They're civil enough outside the sim. In the sim, they don't listen."

"Yeah? Have you talked strategies beforehand?" _Gotcha. _"You're not drifting with Gipsy Danger, guys. They can't read your minds."

"We ain't giving orders inside our heads, sir!" Caleb protested. "They don't even notice, let alone do what we tell 'em!"

_Argh, this is excruciating. _"Like you've noticed, they haven't been in real combat. Of course, they're not going to take orders instinctively. You've got to - "

" - Why the hell is this on us and not them?!" Penny snapped. "Gipsy's crew got officer training at that fancy new 'Jaeger Academy.' We all know how this conversation's gonna go: everyone cater to the rich white kids and their entitlement!"

"Penny!" Tanisha and Caleb snapped in chorus.

_Education, class, race. Check, check, check. _Bruce willed himself to be invisible as the Marines locked eyes, then Caleb jerked his head at the door. Tanisha turned to him as soon as they were on the elevator. "She ain't wrong about them, Bruce."

"She ain't right about them either. They're good guys."

She put her hands on her hips. "I never said they weren't! But why are they here and not you?"

_And this is what it all boils down to, isn't it? You all assumed it would be Trevin and me coming to LA, and you wouldn't have to go through all this getting-to-know-you stuff again. _They wandered outside for some air. It had to be ninety-five degrees. Ah, California, Bruce missed it. "We don't get to pick and choose our deployment company. Not in the Marines, not in the Army, not in the Jaeger Program. Duty's the same."

"What about _theirs_?" Caleb huffed.

Bruce rounded on him. "_They _are a couple of green schoolboys; I know that and so do you. So, yeah, the responsibility for teaching the new guys the ropes is on you. What you and Tani know is something no Academy can teach."

The pair were avoiding his eyes now. Tanisha leaned on the railing. "We haven't had an engagement yet."

"That's up to the kaiju, and the fuckers haven't given us their timetable. Insurgents weren't too polite about that either, remember?" That actually got a chuckle out of her. Bruce was pleased with himself; it was damn difficult to get Tanisha Davis to laugh. "I've got more silver spoons in my mouth than all four of you put together, but you still put up with me."

When it came down to it, the Beckets weren't as wealthy as Caleb and Tani might think, but Bruce didn't bother trying to make that distinction. "You didn't just talk the talk; you walked," Caleb pointed out.

"You can walk and talk with 'em before you're deployed. That's the point of all this." Bruce pointed southeast past the Santa Monica Mountains. "These are _your people, _Tani. This is your city. Are you really gonna let personalities put them in danger?"

She glared into the distance. "You talked to them yet? You tell me the phrase 'angry black woman' hasn't come out."

_Assumptions. Check. _"I haven't talked to them yet, and if it does, I _will _kick their asses. Or I'll hold your and Penny's jackets so you can. Maybe that's what it'll take to get through to them."

Caleb was still frustrated. "Why the hell are we a Sociology lesson?"

"You're not. You're active-duty Rangers, and part of that means drilling the juniors. You've got seniority. Use it. They'll respect it - well, Yancy will, but Raleigh follows Yancy's lead. You don't have to tell 'em your life stories, just the Ranger part."

Now they were a little more thoughtful, so he decided to let them chew on it. "I'll go chat with them now. So far this is just advice. Don't make me pull rank and turn it into an order, Mark Twobies."

"Aye-aye, cap'n." Tanisha saluted him with one finger. Two years ago, she'd have had her ass on report. Today, it was the most promising sign he'd seen yet.

* * *

><p>Returning to the dome for Gipsy Danger's bay, Bruce took careful note of the interactions between the support staff. Hmm. The ground crews were working together calmly enough, some even casual. Gipsy's team really did have a lot of former civilians; they all tended to do a double-take when Yankee's crew saluted Bruce. Penny Jefferson was out in Scramble Alley with Gipsy's LOCCENT crew, explaining deployment procedures; a bunch of the spotter crews were drilling together down on Gipsy's empty bay.<p>

_So the support staff will probably pull it together just fine if we can break the ice between the jockeys. _Technically, the Rangers were the ranking officers behind the dome's Marshall, but many of their support crew had more military experience. It was a combination of loyalty and protectiveness that kept the crews following their pilots' lead on relationships. _Meaning it's all on us. _

He found the Beckets down in K-Science. "We've seen almost every one of these beasties using their tongues like a snake or iguana; it's definitely a major sense organ," one of the white coats was explaining to Yancy. "Even if you can't rip it out, get him in the mouth with your plasma, and that might be just as effective as putting out an eye."

Yancy was nodding. "I like it. So when they roar, we'll just pretend they're saying 'ah.'"

"Bruce!" Raleigh exclaimed, dropping a model claw. "What're you doing here?"

"Seeing how my Alaska boys are handling the California summer." Bruce shook his head in mock-disgust. "A fine, sunny LA day, and you're indoors while Trev and I are stuck in Anchorage. Is this gratitude?"

"We'll swap you," muttered Yancy.

"Ahem," he gave the younger Ranger a warning look. _Not in front of the white coats, Yance. _Yancy caught the message and needed no urging to head for the door. Once safely outside and out of earshot, Bruce turned to them. "So, my sons, I am here to preach the gospel."

Both of them went red and looked everywhere but at him or each other. "Devi and Suze Hassan say nobody's doing well at the group ops," Raleigh mumbled. "Maybe it's just a bad idea."

_Ooh, Baby Becket is discouraged. Not good. _"Did you know we torpedoed the Breach three days ago?" Both of them froze and looked instinctively to the west. Bruce shrugged. "Damn things didn't even shake it. It was mostly a test run, just seeing if we could hit the target, but..."

The boys stared, and Yancy wrinkled his nose. "Nothing?"

He shook his head. "Now K-Watch has to get back in there double-time and replace all the instruments we blew, and the Breach itself is completely intact. Nil for one at bridge-burning." He gave them a pointed look. "So the tacticians and weapons experts are going back to the drawing board. We'll try again."

"I think we see what you did there." Yancy heaved a sigh. "Look - I know by rights we have half responsibility, but it's _not _all our fault! They won't give us the time of day!"

Raleigh nodded, looking equally put-upon. "And yeah, we do try to talk to them. It's one-word answers outside the sim and them snapping out orders when we're in it. It's like they want this to be a disaster."

An idea occurred to Bruce. "When's your next duty assignment?"

"We're off all day; Ramirez kicked us all out of the sims last night," said Yancy. "Hence catching up on our kaiju science; it's not like we're putting our feet up."

"Well, you are now. Sort of. With me." He checked out a jeep and drove them down the Santa Monica Mountains along the water. "We're heading right past the residence of Tony Stark, you know, Yance?"

"Oh, he knows!" Raleigh snorted. "That was the _first _thing he noticed!"

"Shaddup, brat! You were the one whining to go to the air museum."

"At least my hobbies involve stuff that actually happened!"

"I'm going to take a hard right turn off these cliffs if you two start that up again!" He took them past the mountains, until they reached the Getty Center above Santa Monica and LA. Tanisha and Caleb didn't need help visualizing it, but Raleigh and Yancy could stand to see the view of the cities below. "You been up here yet?"

They shook their heads, the humor and ease of the drive slipping away. They knew the point he was making. "We got a flyover in the chopper on the first-day tour, but it's been sims and drills the rest of the time," said Yancy.

"It never hurts to know what your job _really _is. We fell into that habit in the military before. We got assignments, tours, checkpoints, all these details you have to internalize, know inside and out, but you can lose the big picture: what you're trying to protect. Out in the desert, Middle East, Africa bush, it can be even easier to forget."

"We read up on it," Raleigh murmured. "Five million people down there."

"That's a lowball figure, Ranger." They both looked sharply at him. "That's if you just count LA's city limits. South of us, Santa Monica, LA, Santa Ana? What you flew over last week? Eighteen million plus. This is one of the biggest urban metro areas in the world, sixth biggest on the Pacific Rim."

Yancy turned his gaze to the west, towards the ocean. "Last year, our first term, they were just starting to parcel out the urban runoff theory. I know it's only gained ground since then."

"Right." _That means it's coming. It's only a matter of time and tides and currents. They'll be coming._ "You know Tanisha's from here. South side, less a mile from the beach. Let the map talk if you won't take my word for it; she and Caleb don't want this to fail."

But while Raleigh was looking contrite, Yancy was scowling, turning his eyes from the skyline to meet Bruce's. That was interesting; usually Raleigh was the hothead. "Maybe they're not sabotaging the sims, but they sure as hell aren't trying to work with us, Bruce. I don't know if it's a chip on his shoulder or hers or both."

_Attitude accusation. Check. _"I've watched some of your sim vids, Yancy. You ignore her when she gives you orders."

"Since when is 'get the hell out of the way' a standard order? I thought the Jaeger Program wasn't just typical military bullshit."

_Civilian versus military. Check. Again. _"I'm a product of that military bullshit, and when a sharpshooter tells you 'get the hell out of the way,' it's usually for a reason."

Yancy's hackles were up as the wind ruffled his hair. "The _reason _is Davis and Mitchell think they're too good for us, with their hometown connection and inner city - " He caught himself even as Bruce straightened up to full height and Raleigh's breath caught, eyes huge.

Bruce didn't take his eyes off Yancy. "Finish that sentence, Becket and I will kick your ass right here and right now." _Classism, check. City versus suburbs, check. Race... yeah, check. You know you wanted to go there, son. Penny and Tani may have chips on their shoulders sometimes, but people like you and me do the chipping. _

"Yance." Raleigh dared to speak up, voice low and intense. "Stop it. This isn't helping."

Yancy wasn't ready to back down yet. "You _know_ I'm not a racist, Gage. You fucking know it." His tone was dead-earnest, low, and hard. From his perspective, it was because he was telling the god-honest truth.

A little simmer of sheepish amusement eased the hot edge of Bruce's frustration; it was like looking in a mirror, back in time. Himself and Trev at twenty-one, all book-smart and educated, thinking themselves aware of the world and how it worked, never having lacked for everything and only making ham-fisted attempts to understand what it was like for people who did go without. "I never said you were. And no, I don't think it either."

There, he'd taken a metaphorical step back, and calmed Yancy down enough for him to take one too. "Do _they?_ Is that what they think?"

"No. I never said it was all your fault, either. They're the seniors here; they're supposed to be giving you some guidance. They haven't taken a kaiju yet, but they've had eighteen months' practice in their Jaeger, and before that, they were both in combat." He pointed at the Beckets. "On the other hand, you two've got officer training, too. You know they're the senior team, so they're ones supposed to be making the calls in a fight. Hell, Davis and Mitchell don't even like pulling rank; why do you think they haven't put you on report?"

That brought them both up sharp. Bruce could tell they'd never even pictured that. _You're problem isn't that you're racist or even that you're classist. You're just clueless. _"I was pilot for their unit for eight months. I've seen them in action. There is no one I'd trust more going into combat, and I don't say that lightly, because I'd trust every one of our Jaegers. The strike group teams don't have to be drift compatible, don't have to even be friends. But if we can't work together like Ronin and Lion did in Osaka, Guayaquil's going to happen again."

"How'd Ronin and Lion train for it?" asked Raleigh. Bruce could tell from Yancy's expression that that question had never occurred to him.

_Sometimes I wonder if Little Bro's actually the smarter one. _Unfair, maybe, but Yancy was Mister Straightforward, the literal one, the guy who could follow the data and get the answer, but couldn't always take it when people didn't make neat little quantifiable patterns. Ironic that left-brained people were better suited to the right hemisphere of the conn-pod. Raleigh was definitely the creative one on the team; their sim results were proof of that.

"I know, they made it look easy. I don't think any of us were prepared for how hard it is to have to worry about friendly fire with a kaiju in our faces," Bruce sighed. He smiled and confessed, "Trevin and I've done remote sims with Diablo Intercept and Coyote Tango - so far, nobody's made it back alive, and we've only killed the kaiju half the time."

Both brothers tried and failed to stifle their laughter. "That makes me feel better," Yancy muttered, but he was grinning.

"But it can be done. Ronin and Lion proved it in spades, so we need to figure it out - _before _the next attack. Gagnon is having the fightmasters expand the synched fighting drills at the Academy. Trev and I started doing it yesterday with the Ranger Ready crews."

Relieved, Yancy observed, "We're back up there this week to log more time in Gipsy."

But it was Raleigh who ventured, "Maybe we should try some Kwoon work here before we go. With Yankee." He shot Bruce an appealing look, and Bruce chuckled, getting the message.

"I've called cadence before; I can call katas easily enough." Bruce pointed south once more. "If you need some air, come get it here. Nice museum up here, restaurant too. You're three weeks from launch, and there'll be a lot of pomp and circumstance. Don't forget what it's all for."

* * *

><p>It reminded Yancy of those peace talks in period movies, set in some clearing of the forest between kings and their guards - and maybe a wizard trying to broker it all. He made himself smile with the sudden mental image of Bruce Gage as Gandalf or Merlin. It was a wary pair of elder Rangers that joined them in the Kwoon, but they acquiesced immediately to Bruce's proposal of drills.<p>

_We will if you will. _Part of Yancy still felt resistant and defensive; he swore he could smell the judgment coming off those two in waves. _Okay, so you're superior officers. Fine, we can deal with that. But you're not better than us. _

There had been some snide looks thrown Team Gipsy's way when they talked about the Academy; it occurred to him that Yankee's team hadn't had the benefit of a lot of that training, especially the first term beatdown. Still, they obviously knew their Jaeger Bushido. The drill sequences passed quietly, if awkwardly, with Bruce Gage giving commands. They picked up an audience along the way, first crew, then Marshall Ramirez too.

After an hour of individual katas, side-by-side - no real challenge since they were no closer together than they'd been in Academy drills - Bruce switched it up and had the two teams do it in mirror image. Right-hand, left-hand just like they were in a Jaeger, next to each other. Yankee was on Gipsy's right, so Yancy had to check himself during some of the wider maneuvers, and saw Mitchell doing the same. But they managed it without any collisions, and Raleigh and Davis also avoided it when Bruce had them switch places. It was harder with hanbōs, and both teams bonked staffs a few times.

Then Marshall Ramirez said, "The fightmasters have begun mixed-team sparring. Initially two on one with the instructor standing in for the kaiju."

Yancy grimaced, but Bruce just laughed. "It'll be all their dreams come true, getting to beat up on me. Okay, Raleigh left, Tanisha right. Call your shots, right-hand," he added, giving Davis a meaningful look.

"Uh-oh, should we just sit on you now?" Cady murmured as Yancy came off the mat. He didn't answer, but caught a lot of smirks from the people who'd witnessed Raleigh's Final Spar a year ago - and Yancy's reaction.

Bruce started slow, which was a good thing, because Raleigh and Tanisha were having a hell of a time adapting. "You're not a single Jaeger this time, you're two," Bruce pointed out. "You can separate."

"Oh, right. That's simpler. Left flank... that's you, Becket!"

"Copy," Raleigh muttered sarcastically, but obeyed. It was as aggravating to Yancy as to him, but he could see they were making some progress.

"If I call it, I mean you! I ain't calling my own moves!"

"Then how can I keep track of you?"

"Let me worry about that. Just be where I want you," she snapped.

Raleigh shot Yancy a _look_, which Yancy had no trouble interpreting (or agreeing with), but again, did what she said. It was annoying, it was galling... but it was working. As Bruce sped up his attack, Raleigh and Tanisha adjusted to their pattern and _finally _started impeding him. After several rounds of simply following Tanisha's orders, Raleigh started slipping in a few shots of his own where he knew he wasn't interfering with her moves. She noticed, but didn't tell him to stop.

Caleb stepped forward after the fifth round. "I got an idea." The fighters paused from toweling off, and Bruce nodded. "There's a thing we used to do when we first got Yankee. She's a marksman's Jaeger, but we have to time the shots right. Most of the weapons can't discharge simultaneously."

Tanisha's eyebrows shot up, and she went for a hanbō. "No, not you," she told Raleigh. "Just me. Gipsy's close quarters."

"Except the plasma cannon," Yancy pointed out.

"One thing at a time, Mr. Becket," said Marshall Ramirez.

Bruce was also denied a hanbō, and Yancy suspected he was feigning his alarm, but it at least lightened the mood a little. Tanisha didn't wield the bō the way they'd been taught, but everyone worked out that it was standing in for a firearm. "Same formations, same calls as before," she told Raleigh. "But if I say to freeze, you _freeze_, got it?"

"Got it."

It worked. Gradually, not entirely smoothly, but it worked. Raleigh swept inside and occasionally even in front of Tanisha, admonished by her and Bruce to "move like Gipsy," but listened for her commands and assumed whatever position she ordered so she could take her "shot." Yankee was bottom-heavy, meant for stability rather than speed, but Tanisha Davis had internalized her range of motions to a degree Yancy envied.

He was champing at the bit for his turn by the time Bruce had them switch up. It wasn't easy, especially since he and Caleb weren't taking their usual "hemisphere" roles; Caleb was still in command as Yankee's pilot. But he had that same unconscious mastery of his Jaeger's moves that Tanisha did, and quickly adjusted to giving Yancy orders. At least he didn't sound quite so much like he was constantly pissed off.

Around midnight, Bruce called it quits with a melodramatic roar of "BLEHHH, I'm dead" and hurled himself backward onto the mat, getting a round of applause and laughter.

Even Marshall Ramirez applauded, nodding with a faint smile. "Rangers, well done. You've made serious progress today. I want this drill regime to continue for a few days before you resume simulations."

Yancy sighed. He'd been looking forward to a break, but now knew the issue of "commuting" would disrupt their efforts. "We're due back in Anchorage the day after tomorrow, ma'am."

Raleigh nudged him, and gave him a _look._ _Oh, Rals, seriously? Ugh - no, Yance, get your mind off that line of thinking. Bruce is right; they're our teammates, and we've got a job to do. _So he sighed internally and addressed Tanisha and Caleb. "What about coming up with us?"

The pair blinked. "To Anchorage?"

"Yeah. So we can keep this up. Maybe do another sim run, see what the fightmasters have the other teams doing," Raleigh urged.

_Look at you, wooing our allies for training. FDR would be proud. _

Marshall Ramirez frowned. "I like that in theory, but coverage of Los Angeles is a concern. The public wants to know their protectors are present and ready for action."

Yancy looked from her to Bruce to Yankee's team. "It's been less than two weeks since Osaka, ma'am. If there's movement in the Breach before we're back from Anchorage, public opinion'll be the least of our problems." He turned back to Tanisha and Caleb. "In less than a month, we launch, and we should be ready to do deployment drills together. You've been working Yankee for a year - it shows," he added, hoping they could sense he meant it respectfully. "Give us a week in Anchorage, let us get our time logged, and see if we can work some more kinks out while we're there."

The pair exchanged a brief look, their silent communication as quick and clear as anything Yancy had seen between the Gages, the Tunaris, and D'onofrios. "Ma'am?" Caleb asked Ramirez.

She considered it for only a moment longer, then nodded. "Done."

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon: **__Even as fences are mending between the Jaeger teams, a new (or maybe old) source of conflict causes friction between Raleigh and Yancy. And the means they try to use to resolve itisn't exactly without problems in__**Chapter Twenty: Really Great Ideas**__**!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character****Guide**

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark II Jaeger. Enlisted Special Ops Marines who saw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, their battalion worked with an Army unit where Bruce Gage was pilot, and formed a close bond with him and each other. After K-Day, they were in Warrant Officer training as sharpshooters when the Gages transferred to the Jaeger Program, and were among the veterans who joined him as recruits and support troops. Late 20s, Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma. Both grew up poor and untrusting of outsiders, but found common ground first in combat, then as Ranger candidates, and were drift compatible. Caleb had hidden his sexual orientation most of his life, but bolstered by his partner's acceptance, declared it in 2016 after Yankee Star launched.

Penelope Jefferson: Yankee Star's LOCCENT Support Chief, former Chief Warrant Officer with the US Marines. Once a superior officer to Tanisha and Caleb, she is fiercely protective of them, although she trusts other officers once they've worked together (such as Bruce Gage). Mid-30s, African-American from Los Angeles.

Brady Harris: Yankee Star's Public Relations Representative/Team Liaison. Mid-40s, African-American from San Diego, his cousin's daughter, Nicola, is an EMT with Gipsy Danger's crew. He works closely with Gipsy Danger's PR Rep, Carolina Olivares.

Marshall Ana Ramirez: Commanding Officer of the Los Angeles Shatterdome. Mid-40s, formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army, first-generation daughter of Mexican immigrants.

Marshall Blake Ketteridge: Commanding Officer of the Sydney Shatterdome, formerly an Air Vice Marshall with the Royal Australian Air Force. Around age 60.

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Indonesian-Australian sisters, ages 26 and 24, who graduated the Academy along with the Beckets. Newly assigned to Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark III.

Chloe Warner: A classmate of the Beckets and the Hassans who failed to make the second cut at the Academy, now a K-Watch trainee in Hawaii. She and her brother Christian are African-American from Atlanta, Georgia. Christian is now a drivesuit technician for Gipsy Danger.


	20. Really Great Ideas

_**Author's Note: **__Many thanks as always for the reviews and feedback! My Tumblr now has a short fanon side story giving a little background on the crew of Yankee Star and Bruce Gage, if anyone is interested._

**Chapter Twenty: Really Great Ideas**

_June 22, 2017, eighteen days prior to launch of Gipsy Danger…_

Tensions eased a little on the five-hour flight up north with Bruce to serve as buffer/facilitator of conversation. It didn't hurt that Yancy was asleep and Tanisha was drowsing for most of the trip. There was one thing the right-hemisphere pilots had in common, Raleigh mused: they were both _not _morning people.

"How long since you were up at Kodiak?" he asked Caleb.

His fellow "lefty" considered it. "Not since we got the simulator up and running in LA... end of August, so almost a year."

"What was the curriculum like when you were a candidate?" Tendo asked. "Must've been a work in progress."

Bruce chuckled. "Oh, it was. The Twobies were really the first actual 'class,' and it was basically us figuring out our Jaegers and telling them what we knew, fall of 2015."

"Pentecost and the Easterners came up with the Jaeger Bushido system to dial up drift compatibility," Caleb told them.

"Don't tell Tessori; we all called it Jaeger Karate," said one of Yankee's techs. "It seemed so Bruce Lee until the first time they started doing it _in _a Jaeger."

Raleigh grinned sheepishly. "When Yance and I started... we weren't that serious. It was sort of a whim. First time I really, y'know, _wanted _to make the cut was right before you guys were deployed, when they took us outside to see Yankee Star doing the same drills we were learning. Coolest thing ever."

Caleb's smile was finally unreserved. "We were the first ones who started doing that, y'know. She's meant for shooting, but not like a gun. We had to learn to move in her, so we started adapting the Bushido. It was pretty cool."

Bruce slapped his forehead. "I forgot you were the ones who set that trend! Yeah, Tango Tasmania got us all dancing, but Yankee Star was the team that got us pushing the fighting envelope."

Somebody whistled in appreciation, waking Tanisha, but Yancy just mumbled and buried his face in Raleigh's shoulder. Raleigh rolled his eyes. "Running for miles with double weights, Bushido, biochem? No problem. Getting up before ten a.m.? He still can't handle it."

There were a few groans of agreement, but most of the others laughed. Tanisha rubbed her eyes. "Some people're night owls," she said. "Late at night's sometimes the only time you can get stuff done without people interrupting."

"Oh, Yance is no night owl. He's just a lazy ass." She actually cracked a small grin at that.

"We're about an hour from landing. There's still coffee up there if you want some," Tendo offered.

"Hell, yeah." Tanisha stumbled upright and navigated the narrow aisle to the galley.

"You guys were the first open admission class, then?" Caleb asked.

"Not them, that was the one before: 2016-A," said Bruce. "Eden, Prophet, and Coyote 2.0."

"Oh, yeah, I remember that. A couple thousand applied, about three hundred got admitted, and fifty made the first cut," recalled Penelope Jefferson. "The press was bitching that they had impossible standards." She shot Raleigh and Yancy a look that might have been respectful. "I know Pentecost wouldn't lower the bar when he came in for your class."

"He didn't," Bruce confirmed. Raleigh wished Yancy was awake for this conversation. His brother was still tense about the Yankee crew's opinion of them; it might have eased his mind.

Tendo winked at Raleigh and told the Yankee crew, "We saw these two coming a mile away. Maybe not at the start of first term, but by the end? And when we started drift tests? They were way out in front."

Bruce nodded. "None of the first term requirements are secret. People prepare, they practice, more make it. If piloting a Jaeger was easy, everyone would do it."

"We graduated three teams," Raleigh told Caleb. "This last class had six. Captain D'onofrio said the Chinese and Japanese are pre-testing recruits for drift compatibility."

"I heard that. They're a step ahead of the West in a lot of ways," he admitted.

"Well, the Breach is a hell of a lot closer to them. Their cities are bigger too; they've got a lot of reasons to be nervous," Bruce said. But then he smirked. "I do know they've had their share of personality conflicts, though. Tessori's been bitching out Vic and Gunnar for how bad they've been doing in the group ops."

Several of the Gipsy crew - Raleigh included - started snickering. "Uh-oh, is Tessori one of the planners?"

"Yeah, hell, he's one of the senior Fightmasters for the whole Corps. Why?"

Now Cady, Antwan, and Raleigh were cracking up. "Muh?" Yancy grunted as Raleigh jostled him.

Shooting a wink at the other guys, Raleigh said, "I may not have thought this through."

Bruce and Team Yankee were staring at them. "I'm missing something, obviously," said Bruce.

"Hang on - so, Yance, still mad at Tessori about the Final Spar?" Raleigh asked his groggy brother.

Coming back with her coffee clutched to her chest like a talisman, Tanisha shot them a startled look. "Wait, you're talking about the - the guy Tessori put in a choke hold last year?"

"Nuh-uh! That was one of the little guys," Caleb protested.

Now Raleigh was astonished (and rather offended) as his former classmates burst into laughter. "_Little_ guys?!"

Tendo joyfully pointed at Raleigh and crowed to Bruce and the Yankee crew, "Seriously! That was him!"

"And Master Tessori is on Big Brother's shit list to this day!" Antwan announced. "Yancy was _this close _to jumping in there! Cady and me were holding him back with five other guys!"

Now awake and following the conversation, Yancy scowled, which only made the others laugh harder. "He went overboard."

Raleigh couldn't believe Yancy was still torqued about that. "He didn't hurt me, dumbass."

The crew of Yankee Star, most of them United States Marines and combat veterans, were thunderstruck. "God. Damn," Penelope breathed. "Everyone was talking about that. Did Pentecost really have to stop it?"

"Uh..." Raleigh's memory was a bit fuzzy on the details of how that fight had ended, but Antwan and Cady were nodding.

Bruce was staring at him like he'd never seen him before. "I can't believe I never made that connection! The rumor mill said it was one of the younger guys."

"_The _youngest," Tendo confirmed. "Or at least the youngest after first cut. I didn't see it. Wish I had, but we all heard about it too."

"It was epic," sighed Cady. "Some guys went longer, the ones with more fight experience, you could tell, but this kid kept going until he couldn't even crawl and _would... not... quit. _All the judges were looking... kinda like you guys are looking right now." He saw Yancy's expression and cracked up again. "Aww, Yance, you're so cute when you get protective."

"Bite me," Yancy grumbled.

"Sorry, babe, you're not my type. Why don't _you _tell that story more?" Cady demanded of Raleigh. "Shit, I'd be bragging about that to everybody!"

"Truth is, I... hadn't really thought of it like that." Raleigh grinned sheepishly. "And I also don't quite remember how it ended."

That got them all going again. It was a novel sensation. Even after making Ranger Ready, it still threw Raleigh to imagine that he'd really done something noteworthy, let alone separate from Yancy. _Maybe that's the real reason he's still in a huff about it after a year. _That thought occurred before he could squash it.

"Pentecost bitched you out for letting your ego run away with you," Yancy informed him.

Now Raleigh's own memory was running not to the Final Spar, but to a brawl in a bar in December, and the disastrous conversation leading up to it. Fortunately, Antwan intervened, his tone exasperated. "Yan_cy!_ Use your brain! Anjin Tessori is a master martial artist, fighting for longer than any of us have been alive! If he had wanted to truly beat Raleigh or injure him, Raleigh could not have freed himself from _any _of those holds, let alone in the end." Now Yancy frowned, and Raleigh blinked. "Each time, it was the same for all of us. He put us down, asked if we were finished. If we said no, he let us go and continue, in whatever way we could manage. He knew exactly what he was doing."

"I was fine the next day," Raleigh pointed out. "Antwan's right. By those last few rounds, I shouldn't have been able to get loose at all. Tessori let go."

Some of Yankee's crew were goggle-eyed. That was incredibly gratifying. Tanisha was still mostly straight-faced, but there was a funny little twist to her mouth, eyebrows just a little up, as if maybe, just maybe, she was impressed.

If only he could say the same for his brother. "You were on your feet, but you had more bruises than I'd have thought possible over break."

"You're a stick in the mud," he grumbled.

* * *

><p>And, worse, Raleigh couldn't stop thinking about it after that. Once they were off the plane at Kodiak, away from prying ears and headed for Gipsy's bay, he hissed, "Or is it really just you being tetchy because I managed to outscore you for once?"<p>

Yancy stopped in his tracks. "For _fuck's _sake, are you doing this again?!"

"Are _you_?!"

He thought for a minute that this time Yancy was going to take a swing, or just throw something at random, then his brother was stalking towards the Assembly Building so fast that Raleigh had to run to keep up.

"Hey, guys!" Priya exclaimed when they came in. "Listen, we're still testing the interface, so she's not ready for a run until tonight - "

" - Okay, we'll do a sim, then. C'mon." Raleigh had no time to do more than wave apologetically at the engineering crew before hurrying to catch up again.

The Assembly Building sim lab was occupied by Team Yankee. Worse yet, Dr. Lightcap was in the Academy sim lab. "Sorry, boys, the Marshall's decreed no more team sims until after drills tomorrow."

"That's fine," Yancy said distractedly. "Can we do a solo? Not even a combat, just... to check the... handshake?"

She blinked at him, startled by his urgency, then narrowed her eyes as she looked from one Becket to the other. "Oo-kay. I'll give you a cognitive. It's been a few weeks, I guess. You can... see how it works out. I _hope _it does." Setting the program, she let herself out. "It's yours for an hour. Any longer than that and Psych will start sniffing around."

"Thanks," Raleigh mumbled, then turned to Yancy. "What the hell are you - "

"Just come on!" Yancy suited up with a scowl, treating the equipment in the sim room with more force than necessary. "You don't believe me?" he hissed. "You think this is about competition, that I'm really that fucking petty? Fine! I'll fucking _show _ you!" He fidgeted until Raleigh had the rig on, then barked, "Activate handshake!"

They plunged into the drift, and Raleigh was overwhelmed in a heartbeat. This rabbit chased him.

_He was watching his brother pinned down on the Kwoon floor, face twisted with pain, heart hammering, head throbbing - "You're hyperventilating!" Cady hissed in his ear._

_He couldn't stand, he couldn't fight, no, it wasn't real, it was only a test, but it didn't matter, Yancy couldn't fucking handle seeing his brother get hurt - _

_His restraint fell apart when he saw Tessori's arm around his brother's throat. Arms held him back, voices hissed, "Don't!" _

_Raleigh's eyes were rolling back, he was going limp - _

_STOP STOPSTOPSTOPSTOP! Panicpanicpanic - _

_"That's enough!" Tessori let go and his opponent dropped limp onto the mat, senseless - _

Raleigh fell forward in the rig, coughing and panting even though he'd been living that scene from Yancy's perspective that time - when he couldn't breathe in the Kwoon, Yancy couldn't get his breath either -

_Do you get it? Well, do you fucking get it now?! I DON'T LIKE SEEING YOU GET HURT! HE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HURT YOU!_

"YANCE!" Six months ago, he might not have had the control to push a rabbit back, let alone one as powerful as this that Yancy was actively driving. But reality came back into focus, and he saw his brother's pained, angry face next to him - only to fall over both of their heads into another nightmare.

_Yancy, so beaten down, exhausted, and miserable after the talk with Jazmine and Diane. Raleigh hated seeing him that way, how dare they do that to him, it wasn't his fault!_

"Warning: Both hemispheres out of alignment."

The cool, dispassionate voice of the pod simulator broke through the flood of memories just enough, and Raleigh croaked, "End simulation!"

"Deactivating handshake."

"Wait - " Yancy began weakly, but Raleigh shook his head.

"No. We're stopping." If there'd been a bucket still in the room, he'd have probably used it, but managed to keep a grip. "This isn't - not the way. Not gonna work, not drifting - " He fumbled his way out of the rig, and this time he was the one hurrying Yancy along until they were back in the empty lab. Neither of them could make it any further, and they both had to sit down.

He threw his arms around Yancy's neck, hugging his brother harder than he'd done in months, as if the flash-flood of drift was still trying to wash them both away. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I'm sorry!"

"'m not jealous," Yancy mumbled into his shoulder. "I'm not. Rals, I just hate it - "

"I know. I do, I get it now. I - Yance, we're Jaeger pilots! You're the one who keeps thinking about the risks, what're we supposed to do?!" _And how do I handle seeing you like _this_?! _

Yancy shook his head and wiped his face on his shirt, keeping Raleigh in a one-armed hug. "It's not... when we're in the pod, it's different. I'm _with _you. I can _do_ something." He took a gulping breath of air and shut his eyes. "That I can deal with. Not just having to watch. Damn it." He pulled himself upright with Raleigh's help, neither of them quite steady enough to let go entirely yet. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you thought it... meant I was pissed at you."

What did it mean for Gipsy if they both freaked out so easily over the sight of the other in pain, even non-physical? Seeing Yancy immobile with Jaeger-head had been hard, but seeing him like _this_... Raleigh felt ready to fly apart at the seams.

What did it mean that they were still misunderstanding things after almost a year of drifting?

They couldn't rely on the drift alone. And they definitely couldn't try this again; it had almost drowned both of them. _If you've got something to say..._

"I just wanted you to be proud of me," he said in a small voice.

He wanted to take it back immediately, because he knew from the way Yancy flinched that he'd hurt him again. But luckily, he couldn't see his brother's face; Yancy pulled him into another fierce hug. They'd hugged more in the past nine months than probably all the rest of their lives combined.

"I _am," _Yance insisted, sounding desperate. "I thought you knew that."

Maybe he should have. Maybe the problem really was Raleigh, not Yancy.

There was a knock on the door, and they jumped apart as it opened and Dr. Lightcap slipped back in. "Sorry, guys. Everything okay?"

"Uh..."

"Er, yeah."

Bullshit, and anyone who looked at them for ten seconds could figure that out. How screwed were they now? But Dr. Lightcap's smile was gentle. "Between you and me and the currently-malfunctioning camera," she winked, "you're not the only team that's been unsettled these past couple of weeks."

Well, that was reassuring... maybe. Raleigh smiled weakly, and Yancy said, "So that means we're not headed for a disaster here?"

"Well, the Breach is still open, so technically, yes, we're headed for disaster, but not because brothers argue. Or significant others, or spouses, or friends." Dr. Lightcap stiffened at something on her monitors and whispered, "Go wash up!" jerking her head at the bathroom. They scrambled to obey as someone else came into the lab.

"Sorry, Doctor, we need to look at the security camera."

"Again?! What the hell is wrong with that thing?"

"I wish I knew, ma'am, it's been spotty for weeks. Maybe a short in the wiring." Washing his face, Yancy nearly choked himself and Raleigh had his fist in his mouth to stifle his laughter.

Lightcap was a better actor than they'd ever given her credit for. "Great. With our luck it'll burn the building down. Should I just shut down so you can get up there?"

"Do you mind?"

"Knock yourselves out. Hang on, let me transfer this. Okay. Later!" She came strolling out past the bathroom with a blithe smile. "Walk with me to the Assembly Building, Rangers, I'll finish my analysis there." Once they were outside, she murmured, "My husband has some hidden talents at electronics."

"What if he gets caught?" Yancy fretted.

"They'll assume he's trying to get them off _my _back. Relax. What're they going to do, fire me?" She slipped between them. "My duty is to report 'behavior of concern,' and contrary to what the psychs seem to think, I can tell the difference. Anxiety, frustration, and arguments aren't 'behavior of concern' and don't merit any of you being dragged into a team meeting for them to peel your head apart like an onion. If anything, that does more harm than good."

Yancy stopped, gazing at the sky as if just enjoying the nice weather. "Doc, do you... when you first started drifting..."

She waited, then prompted, "We're not on the record, Yancy. Ask. I won't tell."

"Did you feel like you..." he looked nervously at Raleigh. "Like you changed?"

"You too, huh?" Raleigh murmured.

Dr. Lightcap didn't hesitate. "Yes. It caught me unprepared too. At first I wasn't sure whether it was good or not." Raleigh and Yancy looked at each other, but she waited until they looked at her again. With conviction, she finished, "I am now. It did change me, but for the better. I don't regret it."

Raleigh wasn't quite sure why he felt so relieved, but it was as if... he had wanted to hear that answer. Really, desperately had wanted to hear it. "The psychs talk about it, but half the time I can't make sense of what they mean."

"Yeah, that happens a lot." She snorted. Even in the time he'd known her, it seemed like she'd gotten more laid back. Maybe that was just getting to know them, having them become fellow Rangers... or maybe she was still changing. She went on, "What it boils down to is barriers. The drift knocks them all down between you and your partner - demolishes them, really. Some people can't handle that even with someone they love and trust. That's why it's so hard to establish drift compatibility. That's why we use the milder semi-drift for second term testing instead of the full drift. To decide whether it's even worth the shock and trauma."

"Does it change everybody?"

"I think so. If I just based it on what I've experienced, and what others have told me - naming no names... my theory is that we human beings spend our entire lives building walls. The psych theories do back me up there; it's human instinct to try to protect ourselves even more emotionally than physically. Drifting shatters those walls, and the longer, more consistently you drift, the more total it is. I think... after getting accustomed to that, for those of us who can manage it, we start to find there are some walls that we don't even need with the general public."

That was so much less intimidating an explanation than what the psychs tended to throw around. Raleigh found it easier to smile again. "It's overwhelming sometimes."

"It is. That's why I wouldn't let you use the drift again the way you tried today. It's impossible to just explain why, but now you know. A _lot _of the crews have tried using the drift to resolve issues, but it's like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. I'd only worry if you made a habit of it. We all still have to rely on old-fashioned communication, even with drift partners. Ironically enough, drifting made me less afraid to talk."

"That's not really a problem we've ever had," Yancy admitted, and she laughed.

"Maybe not to other people, but to each other? About serious things?" She had them there, and they knew it. Linking arms with both of them, she started them walking again. "Changing tactics has churned up a lot of doubts, even with the experienced teams. And you two are less than a month away from launch. It's perfectly normal to be nervous. But I will tell you - and I've told the brass, _on _the record - I'm not worried about you at all. You'll be ready. You're already ready."

Back at the Assembly Building, they saw Tanisha and Caleb coming out of the sim pod, looking frazzled. Raleigh and Yancy stared at each other. "Ya think..." Yancy murmured.

Raleigh opened his mouth to speculate, then caught himself and grinned. "None of our business, is it?"

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming this weekend: **__The clock is ticking towards the launch of Gipsy Danger - and also towards the next kaiju attack, everyone knows. But preparing for the public launch of their Jaeger means training for more than just combat. Raleigh and Yancy have to manage team exercises __as well as public relations in __**Chapter Twenty-One: Front and Center**__**!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark II Jaeger. Enlisted Special Ops Marines whose battalion worked with an Army unit where Bruce Gage was pilot. After K-Day, they were in Warrant Officer training as sharpshooters when the Gages transferred to the Jaeger Program. Late 20s, Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.

Penelope Jefferson: Yankee Star's LOCCENT Support Chief, former Chief Warrant Officer with the US Marines. Mid-30s, African-American from Los Angeles.

Cady Spencer: Filipino-American from Oregon, age 25, one of Gipsy Danger's LOCCENT technicians along with Tendo Choi.

Antwan Ferrier: Jamaican national, age 39, a personnel coordinator for Gipsy Danger's strike troops

Anjin Tessori - one of the senior martial arts instructors/fightmasters at the Jaeger Academy. Japanese national, age mid-60s


	21. Front and Center

_**Author's Note:** Many thanks to everyone for all the awesome reviews! Please keep them coming! There are two more gratuitous geek culture (well, one more pop culture classic) references in the press conference practice scene of this chapter - anyone catch them?_

**Chapter Twenty-One: Front and Center**

_Jaeger Academy and PPDC Proving Grounds, Kodiak, Alaska…_

_June 2017…_

As much as Dr. Lightcap was correct, and trying to resolve the concern versus competition issue with a drift had been like trying to water a plant with Niagara Falls, it had purged the lingering tension over Fightmaster Tessori. Yancy and Raleigh were at ease when they reported for drills and then joined the other Rangers and Ranger-Readies for team exercises.

The western military drill sergeants had also not been idle in tackling the teamwork issue, and came up with a sadistic - but often hilarious - program of obstacle courses that had to be completed while the teams were tied together at the waist. It was actually fun; Tendo Choi christened it The Three-Legged Race of DOOM and got at least one run on camera before the MPs kicked him out amid threats of grievous bodily injury from the Rangers.

They learned to ignore the recruits who peered at them during the assorted outdoor comedies of errors. "Wonder if this will encourage them or send them running for the exit?" Yancy mused.

"You can't be a Ranger if you don't have a sense of humor," Steffie Lanphier insisted.

"I'd've thought that if we didn't know Tanisha," Raleigh murmured in his ear, making him snicker and elbow him.

Tanisha and Caleb still weren't exactly friendly... but Yancy no longer took quite so much umbrage at it, since it was obvious they were that way with everyone. Some of the newbies from Class 2017-A were like that too. It didn't seem to be military or non-military, or nationality or relationship that defined it, just personalities. Dr. Lightcap had said that every single team was different at the neurological level, so Yancy figured he'd just have to take each one as they came.

They went out in Gipsy that afternoon, feeling a giddy elation to be genuinely in her again instead of the sim, and saw a massive crowd of recruits as well as fellow Rangers watching. After diagnostic, they took her through the full run of Bushido drills, thinking of their practice with Yankee. Tanisha and Caleb were all business afterwards, but had plenty of questions.

"What's the range on that plasma?"

"Pretty damn long. Dissipation's not your issue," said the munitions developer. "The problem is going to be spatter over distance. It'll operate like a shotgun. For team ops, be well behind them before they fire off that stuff."

They were in Anchorage for five days. On the evening of the second day, they finished close-synched drills under Fightmaster Tessori's watchful eyes without stepping on anyone else's toes or hitting each other's hanbōs.

On the third day, Team Gipsy and Team Yankee ran another team combat simulation. They came out with two intact Jaegers, one dead kaiju, and zero incidents of friendly fire. Dr. Lightcap happened to be there as Team Gipsy exited the pod and whispered, "Told you!"

Giving over the decision-making to anybody else still grated on Yancy a little, but it got easier... once they started trusting Tanisha and Caleb. And once Tanisha and Caleb figured out that Raleigh and Yancy could also be trusted.

With two weeks to go until Gipsy's public launch, there was some debate among the commanders as to whether Raleigh and Yancy should go back to LA or just stay in Anchorage.

"No, bring 'em down for a couple more days," said Tanisha. "We still have work to do."

They drilled harder and harder, giving themselves a smaller and smaller margin of error in space and reaction time, both in the simulator and out. "We need to be able to drill together on base without taking each other out," Raleigh agreed.

Right before heading back to LA so Team Yankee could finish logging their June time, Raleigh and Yancy got to take part in one final milestone for Class 2016-B: the non-public introduction of Hydra Corinthian, the first of the Mark IV Jaegers. Stephanie Lanphier and Kennedy LaRue were to be her pilots.

"She'll be ready for her pilots to start logging time in her by the end of July," Dr. Schoenfeld told them proudly, as Stephanie and Kennedy stood a little apart from the others. "Goal is New Year's Launch for the first Mark IV, and the first fully-digital Jaeger."

"These kids and their new-fangled gadgets!" said Trevin Gage in a grumpy-old-man voice. "What's the word on the rest of the Mark IIIs?"

"September for Shaolin Rogue; Fei Yen and Huan already left for Hong Kong, but the rest of the newbies are sticking around until Gipsy's launch before scattering. October for Vulcan Specter in Brisbane, and three more Mark III mechs before the end of this year. 2018 and 2019 should see ten Mark IVs roll out."

"Is there gonna be a Mark V?" asked Raleigh, laughing.

It was mostly a joke, but then they all saw Schoenfeld's sly expression, and half the crowd chorused, "Seriously?!"

"Oooh, we've got a few ideas. Funding it is going to be a _thing_, considering the Mark IVs took about seventy billion a pop, but we're still pushing the limits of the engineering and pons capabilities. Depending on whether or not those assaults on the Breach ever yield results, well," Schoenfeld shrugged. "We may need to keep pushing the Jaeger envelope."

"Doctor, did you hear the really great idea that got presented to Homeland Security yesterday for consideration?" asked Priya Katwal with a sly smile.

"Uh-uh."

"Not sure I did either," muttered Kennedy, and she tended to keep up on the political stuff. Yancy and Raleigh exchanged a blank look with several of the others.

"Our distinguished Concrete Producers of America and the United Steel Workers think they have a catch-all solution to the 'kaiju problem' - their words. A wall."

There was a long, very confused silence. "Say what now?" said Tendo slowly.

Priya was flat-out giggling. "They want to build a wall around the Pacific Ocean to keep the kaiju out."

Yancy wasn't sure who started laughing first. But pretty soon they were all howling, and those who weren't belly-laughing were just repeating, "What?!" over and over.

Schoenfeld was shaking his head. "Speaking as an engineer, I see a few flaws in that plan."

"Did nobody float that one in Seoul?"

"I'm sure somebody did, but the reaction was 'yeah, right.'"

* * *

><p>"A wall around sensitive parts of a city, maybe," Raleigh mused on the way back to LA, considering some of the books he'd read. "But what would you make it out of that a kaiju can't knock down?!"<p>

"Yeah, that didn't do Troy a lot of good, did it?" said Tendo, reclining his chair. "Schwarzenegger was yammering about the border wall back before K-Day when he was governor. Hell, we knew that was useless against humans." He peered shamelessly over Raleigh's shoulder at his tablet. "What game's that?"

"Just chess with animated pieces; I've got a running game against Suze Hassan. Oh, great, she knows about the wall. Now she's making fun of Congress."

"Tell her only Americans get to make fun of the American government. More important, who's winning the game?" Tendo watched little foot soldiers in armor duking it out on the board.

"At the moment, she's ahead on pieces, but I'll have her in check in a minute. Then you can watch my queen beat up her bishop. Somebody should invent Jaeger-Kaiju Chess. I'd pay money for that."

Yancy lazily counted on his fingers. "No dice, we don't have enough of either yet. Once the Mark IVs are out... kaiju every three months... maybe."

"I've got Game of Thrones Chess back home," said Cady Spencer. "It's out of date by now."

"I didn't know you play. Trade seats with him, Rals, lemme see what he's got."

"Hang on. Suze says winner of our match plays winner of yours."

"At this rate, we'll need a bracket again," Tendo said.

"Are you Gipsies seriously having a chess tournament?!" demanded Penny Jefferson.

"Hell, yeah! And right after, we're having a meeting of the Pretentious Hipster Book Club. Organic vegetarian food provided," said Tendo.

Caleb snorted loudly. "At least you admit it. We'll be on the fun side of the plane if anyone needs us, eating barbecued ribs and watching Dancing With The Stars."

* * *

><p><em>Los Angeles Shatterdome, June 2017…<em>

With two weeks until launch, Carolina Olivares was spending a lot of time coaching Raleigh and Yancy on public appearance – or rather, forewarning them about the insanity that was about to be unleashed on them, with much snarky commentary from Team Gipsy and Team Yankee.

"You're cute, which means you'll have girls all over you, but then some of the commentators will say you were chosen for looks instead of abilities," Brady Harris, Yankee Star's PR liaison, warned them.

"And if you weren't cute, they'd bitch about that too," Tendo agreed.

The boys weren't too concerned about that… until they really started paying attention to the discussion already going on in the media.

_"__What idiot general thought it was a good idea to put two completely untried Jaeger teams in charge of protecting the entire west coast of the United States?"_ a talking head caterwauled on Fox News. _"Why are a pair of tested and proven Blackhawk pilots cooling their heels up in Alaska while we have two high school drop-outs and the affirmative action poster children?!"_

Tendo wasn't that shocked, but from the less-worldly amongst Team Gipsy, he swore he heard the thud of jaws hitting the concrete floor.

"What… the… FUCK?!" Impressive. Raleigh'd hit soprano range.

"Did Tessori give you amnesia, kid, or were you really that distracted a year ago?" demanded Penny.

"That is not helpful, Miss Jefferson," Carolina scolded. "Raleigh!" Little Bro looked ready to put his fist through the TV. "Calm down."

Yancy was only slightly less worked up. "Did that motherfucker seriously say what I think he just said about her?!" he gestured to Tanisha.

The Ranger in question hadn't even blinked at the TV, but now she was raising her eyebrows at the Beckets. "Damn, you two are sheltered."

"Also not helpful," Caleb sighed, nudging her. "Yeah, that's a thing, guys. It's a big thing. Sometimes for me but mostly for her."

"Why you? I mean – not that – shit, that came out wrong," Yancy groaned, face-palming.

Tanisha took pity on him. "I'm black, he's gay. The only crew that might fall lower on Fox's shit list is Vulcan Specter's."

"Wait, why… you're kidding me. Because they're Muslim?!"

"Ooh, yeah, the brass is keeping that under wraps, I guarantee," muttered Penny. "I doubt they'd even get a Jaeger on this side of the lake."

Raleigh was still in shock. Penny was looking scornful, so Tendo sent her a text. _Give them a break. They're young._

She rolled her eyes, but Carolina and Brady were explaining how not to react to the inflammatory stuff. "Any and every word you say will make the news. If you respond to lowlifes like that, you give them exactly what they want: air time," Carolina told the Beckets.

"You're _Rangers_," Raleigh breathed, still completely aghast. "They can't – we can't - "

"It's still a free country, especially for loudmouthed old white men, Rals," said Christian Warner. "They can say whatever they want. You try to do anything about it, or even call them out, they'll scream you're oppressing them. If _we _try to say anything about it, we're just angry blacks playing the 'race card.'"

Unlike many on Team Yankee, Tendo felt charitable enough to be a little sorry to bid farewell to Raleigh and Yancy's naïveté. Penny would say – with some justification – that Tendo was in an ivory tower of his own when it came to race relations, but they were all the sum of their experiences. Some with an abundance of privilege, others with a lack thereof that was unfathomable to kids like the Beckets.

_Welcome to the real world, Becket boys. Even now, a lot of us have to worry about more than sea monsters. _

Nobody said life was fair, and even if Gipsy Danger and Yankee Star took out every kaiju that came through the Breach from here on out without breaking a sweat, the pundits and the armchair quarterbacks would still be giving them shit. Kids from Tanisha's neighborhood would still be getting shot by wanna-be cops, kids like Caleb would still be driven to suicide, people like the Hassans would still be getting shipped to Gitmo. And people like the Beckets who woke up to all the injustice would have to face that it couldn't be fought with a Jaeger.

* * *

><p><em>Los Angeles Shatterdome…<em>

_July 1, 2017…_

"Are you looking forward to your first deployment, Raleigh?" Carolina asked in their full-on mock press conference.

"Sure!"

"GNRRR!" Tendo pretended to ring a buzzer. "Wrong answer! Tomorrow's headline: _Jaeger Pilot Wishes Death and Destruction on America's Shores!_"

"I SUCK at this!" Raleigh exploded, banging his forehead on the table.

Yancy laughed, slapping his back, and pulled an exaggeratedly thoughtful face before saying, "We never look forward to seeing kaiju in our oceans, but Gipsy Danger's crew will be ready when you need us."

"Nice one, Captain America!"

Carolina was chuckling. "You don't have to worry quite so much about putting it the 'right' way, Yancy."

"What do you call that hairstyle?" Tendo asked.

"Arthur," Raleigh replied without lifting his head from the table.

"Quiet, peanut gallery," Carolina ordered, and Antwan brandished a roll of duct tape at Tendo. She re-assumed "reporter mode," and prompted Raleigh, "How did you prepare for meeting the admission standards?"

A little more at ease, Raleigh sat back up. "My last year of high school, we started looking at the material and studying what they had. We worked out, got into shape for the physical stuff."

"Very good. It shows some dedication. And you were both athletes before, weren't you?"

Raleigh nodded. "Wrestling and hockey."

"What was your GPA in high school?"

"Uh... three-point-something when I graduated."

Cady feigned shock. "You mean you _didn't _drop out and turn into hockey bums?! Did the Internets lie to us?"

That got them all going again. Even Tanisha got into it. "Is it true you can see Russia from your window?" she asked, completely deadpan.

Carolina and Brady groaned loudly, and Raleigh put on an innocent puppy expression. "No, there are trees in the way, but if you go out to the beach and climb on top of the really, really big wall they're building to save us from the kaiju, you can see Russia then!"

"Good one!" Tendo hooted as everyone laughed and applauded.

"Can you give us the names of any future Jaegers?"

"Optimus Prime."

"Dibs!" A bunch of the spotter pilots raised their hands. "We are totally going back to Academy for that one!"

"They wanted to call her that," said Caleb, pointing over his shoulder at Yankee's bay. "Official story is that brass decided it wasn't 'appropriate,' same reason they wouldn't name any of the kaiju Godzilla."

"Unofficially?" asked Tendo.

"They couldn't get the trademark rights. At least that's what Schoenfeld said."

"Aww!"

Tanisha nudged him in the ribs. Tendo had noticed by then that this pair sat as physically close as any of the other teams. "He's got three different Optimus Primes in a row on our desk. One of 'em's some crazy collector edition."

"Picked him up at a garage sale for five bucks when I was fourteen," said Caleb proudly. "He's worth almost a grand now. I need to insure him."

"You really do!" Yancy exclaimed.

Raleigh snorted and poked his brother. "Comics are this guy's vice, but all the action figures are in storage. He's got some valuable ones too. Limited edition books, trading cards, the works."

"And we shall call him Coulson," Brady chuckled. "So, Yancy, here's a loaded question: Marvel or DC?"

"Oohhh, you've done it now," Raleigh groaned, collapsing onto the table again.

Tendo and the others chortled; he could swear Yancy's face lit up. _I hope adorkable is considered a selling point for Rangers. _

It wasn't all laughs; Raleigh still fumed and Yancy's jaw clenched when the topic got into issues of their or Yankee's fitness - or worthiness. Tendo started counting the veins he saw throbbing when the pundits made snide remarks about Tanisha's race or Caleb's sexual orientation. As if it had anything to do with their skills as pilots.

Cheap shots were thrown at the Beckets too - the high school drop-out rumor didn't seem to want to die - but not to the degree that Yankee's crew endured. At least even the hardened cynics of Team Yankee couldn't deny that the Beckets' fury on their behalf was genuine, and that gained them some appreciation.

To everyone on Team Gipsy's relief, Team Yankee wasn't without public appreciation. It was just more localized. In some ways, they decided, it seemed more sincere. "We drill outside a lot," Tanisha told them. "When the outside grounds are open, people come watch. We get a lot of local kids."

Carolina nodded. "I was about to ask if you would start that again after Gipsy is installed. You could do it together. I know you'll draw crowds when the Jaegers are outside, but it inspires the public to see the pilots as well."

"We're planning on it," Brady confirmed. "Marshall Ramirez closed the grounds while we were getting ready for Gipsy's installment, but she agreed to reopen the waterfront and the access roads as soon as possible."

The military personnel had to teach all the former civilians the assorted, confusing conventions for meeting the President, generals, ambassadors, and other dignitaries. Raleigh and Yancy looked cross-eyed by the end of it, and Tendo was sure he'd never keep it all straight. At least there (probably) wouldn't be a camera pointed at him if _he _messed it up, unlike his poor jockeys!

"Count yourselves lucky, gentlemen; the queen of England's coming to Chrome Brutus's launch in December," Marshall Ramirez informed them.

Raleigh won the prize for batting his eyes and executing a dainty curtsy that had half the crews breathless with laughter. Yancy finished it off with a royal wave. "Is Kate Middleton's sister still single? Let's set 'em up!" suggested someone.

They were made to pose for pictures in the bays, mostly Rals and Yance, but all the crews as well. "I feel like I'm back in school doing those horrible huge yearbook spreads on the field," Cady complained.

"Just think of it as the Chess Club photo," said Penny Jefferson.

"What were you, Future Human Resources of America?" Christian Warner teased.

"Track and field, four-time state champions, baby!"

"Yeah? Distance or sprint?"

"Hurdles and triple jump."

* * *

><p><em>Los Angeles Shatterdome…<em>

_July 3, 2017…one week prior to launch …_

Team Yankee still referred to Team Gipsy as hipsters, but it was all good fun. As far as Tendo could tell, Raleigh and Yancy hadn't managed to interest Tanisha and Caleb in chess, though Tanisha loved strategy games, and somebody added a Walking Dead edition of Risk to the offerings in the rec room. Everyone was eagerly anticipating when Jaeger and Kaiju editions of games would start appearing.

Just before Team Gipsy departed for Anchorage for their final round of launch prep, a few of them were avoiding the television, just sprawled on the rec room couches with books and card games. Tendo was playing poker with Caleb, Penny, and Carolina as Raleigh and Tanisha read and Yancy dozed on the couch. Raleigh scampered off with a couple of the more energetic crew to play basketball outside, while Yancy was content to stay in the semi-air conditioned indoors and commandeered Raleigh's Kindle.

"What's he been reading?" asked Tanisha, leafing through an airline shopping magazine someone had left behind.

"War and Remembrance. One of his World War II books."

Caleb looked up from his poker hand. "Wasn't that a TV series too?"

Tendo folded his hand and nodded. "1980s, Robert Mitchum. Good, but depressing as hell."

"Your baby brother loves his Greatest Generation, doesn't he?" Tanisha murmured. Then something in the catalog caught her eye and she sat up. "Hey, ever seen this?" She passed it over, and whatever was up for sale made Yancy's eyes bug out.

"What? Lemme see!" The poker game was forgotten, and they all went to peek.

It was just another of those grossly-overpriced catalogs of weird collectible crap from airline seat pockets, but Tendo recognized at once what had gotten Tanisha's attention.

_EXCLUSIVE! World War II and K-Day collide with this unique kaiju and Jaeger-tracking map! Cover the entire Pacific Ocean, track the locations of your favorite mechs and their deployments just like the Greatest Generation tracked their ships and planes! Order Now, and receive a lifetime membership, all new kaiju and Jaeger figures guaranteed to arrive within thirty days of release!_

It was a round map for a table top that did remind Tendo of those maps that uniformed women would shove little ships and planes around on sticks in old war movies, but instead of planes and ships, it was little kaiju and Jaegers and even Shatterdomes.

"That's actually kind of awesome," he admitted.

Yancy was... starry-eyed. "Oh my god. I need to order this."

Carolina grinned at them. Some of the Yankees rolled their eyes, but there was fondness behind it; Yancy was never cuter than when he got all sentimental about his baby brother. "Save up and get it for his birthday," Tendo suggested.

But Yance shook his head. "Uh-uh. I need to get it before he even knows it exists. For launch." He faltered when he saw the price; even Rangers didn't get paid so much that they'd have a couple hundred bucks to throw around. But they could tell he was determined.

Tendo winked at the others and raised a hand. "I'll go in on it."

"No, you don't have to do that - "

" - You never said I did. I'm in. Wanna see the look on kiddo's face when he finds this in here."

"Me too!" Several more of Team Gipsy raised their hands. Yancy looked uncomfortable now, but Carolina swatted him. "You know he's about to become the youngest active-duty Ranger in the Corps. We are all proud of both of you. Anyone who wants to contribute, see me!" she ordered.

Yancy was befuddled and embarrassed now, but he gave in. "Thanks." He looked at the picture and grinned. "Someone better have a camera ready when we have it set up."

Antwan commandeered a tablet and was looking it up online. "Oh, they don't have Gipsy Danger yet, but they say the Mark III Jaegers will be sent out as soon as they're released. So she'll be on it soon."

Caleb grinned and shook his head. "I'll give you one of my Optimus Primes to stand in for her 'till then."

**_To be continued..._**

_**Coming Monday: **__ Fanfare and fireworks as Gipsy Danger launches and the Los Angeles Shatterdome opens. The golden age of Jaegers has begun... but the war clock is still ticking towards the next movement in the Breach in __**Chapter Twenty-Two: On Top Of The World**__**!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark II Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.

Penelope Jefferson: Yankee Star's LOCCENT Support Chief, former Chief Warrant Officer with the US Marines. Mid-30s, African-American from Los Angeles.

Cady Spencer: One of Gipsy Danger's LOCCENT technicians along with Tendo Choi, Filipino-American from Oregon, age 25.

Christian Warner: Drivesuit technician for Gipsy Danger, age 26, African-American from Atlanta, Georgia. After failing at drift compatibility, he and his sister Chloe chose different career paths: Christian chose tech, and Chloe joined K-Watch in Hawaii.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative. Mid-60s, Mexican-American from San Francisco, survived K-Day and came out of retirement to join the PPDC.

Brady Harris: Yankee Star's Public Relations Representative. Late 30s, African-American from San Diego.

Priya Katwal: Senior J-Tech Engineer, former NASA employee, mid-50s, Indian-American


	22. On Top Of The World

_**Author's Notes**: This update comes early since I'm having oral surgery tomorrow. (Oh joy. Well, reviews would make me feel better!) My Tumblr, 3Fluffies, has a new round of headcanon posted on the Mark-3 Jaegers and their pilots._

**Chapter Twenty-Two: On Top Of The World**

_Jaeger Program Assembly Building, Kodiak Island, Alaska…  
>Monday, July 10, 2017. <em>

"Team Gipsy, look sharp! Two hours to launch!" Antwan Ferrier yelled over the comms.

There were bands playing and dignitaries gathering in finery out on the PPDC proving grounds, but the crew of the Jaeger being launched barely had a chance to breathe all day. The techs and pod crew had to get Raleigh and Yancy suited up and into the conn-pod on schedule, then hustle out of their greasy, dirty coveralls into formal uniforms.

"Are we supposed to sell that we all have polished shoes and pressed jackets while we're lubricating the drop gear?" somebody grumbled in line for the cramped Assembly Building showers.

"It was the same in NASA," Priya Katwal told them. "Gearing up for public appearances was more work than gearing up for outer space."

"Air Force One just flew over!" somebody exclaimed.

"_Aww, man! We missed it!_" Christian Warner complained as he and the rest of the conn-pod crew worked on Raleigh and Yancy's rigs.

"He's not landing on Kodiak; the airstrip's too small," Tendo told them over the LOCCENT chief's shoulder. "They're going into Anchorage." As another group came running into LOCCENT, he grinned broadly and revealed another of the assorted planned surprises for their favorite Rangers. "And guess who just walked in the door, my Becket boys?"

"... _Robert Downey, Jr.?_"

"... _Halle Berry?_"

Devi Hassan elbowed Tendo out of the way to grab the mike. "Sorry to disappoint you, Rangers, just old friends from the land down under."

"..._Dev?! Wait, you're here?!_"

"Surprise!" Suze crowed. "And we haven't come alone! We picked up a K-Watching Warner Sister in Hawaii on the way!"

There was a thud from somewhere in the conn-pod, then Christian yelled, "_Chlo, you bitch, you didn't tell me!"_

"Gotcha, baby!" Chloe laughed.

"_Today's not just about the pilots, y'know_," Tendo heard Yancy saying, probably to Christian. "_It's your launch too_."

"That's the truth," the Anchorage LOCCENT chief agreed. "C'mon, crews, finish this up."

"_Gipsy One and Two harnessed and engaged_," Christian announced. "_Suit team exiting the conn-pod_."

"Secure the pod, Mr. Choi," ordered Marshall Gagnon. He gestured to the Hassans and the rest of former Class 2016-B. "All non-essential personnel, report to the spectator area. Rangers, join your crews."

"_This is Jumphawk Crew Anchorage Alpha. Romeo Blue now released on proving grounds, section A-9, next to Brawler Yukon_."

"Copy that, Alpha. Romeo Blue, stand down until further instructed."

"_Standing down, LOCCENT_."

"_This is Brawler Yukon, we have Romeo on our left_," said Dr. Lightcap. "_We're in position_."

"_This is Gipsy Pod Team, conn-pod secure_."

"_Releasing for drop_," Yancy confirmed from inside. Gipsy's pod slid smoothly down the rails onto her shoulders, locking into place.

"Coupling confirmed, sir."

"Gipsy Pod Team, you're cleared. Get suited up for public launch and into position," Gagnon ordered.

"Double-time, you heard the Marshall," Antwan ordered, and the techs went stampeding off.

_Thank god the brass vetoed having embedded reporters at deployments. This is a pain in the ass, _Tendo thought.

The crawler started rolling Gipsy towards the doors as Gagnon ordered the Beckets and D'onofrios to prepare for handshake. As drifts went, this one would be pretty short. Once Gipsy was active and her pilots online, Gagnon too headed outside. Tendo waited 'till he was gone, then toggled the comm. "How we doin', Becket boys? Nervous?"

"_Nah_," said Yancy.

"_We're pumped_," Raleigh agreed.

Tendo eyed their vitals screens, and winked at Priya. "They're liars," he whispered. She grinned.

Now that Gagnon was gone, somebody turned on a TV so they could hear the coverage of the actual event outside. "Hey, can we put this on the conn-pod speakers? You guys need to hear this," said Tendo. "I think NBC's using the same announcers who do the Olympics."

_"We're now less than an hour away from the historic launch of the first Mark-3 Jaeger here on Kodiak Island, Alaska! President Santos is now landing in Marine One, and the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps Proving Grounds are jammed with VIPs awaiting their first glimpse of Gipsy Danger!"_

_"Less than six months since the first Rangers tragically lost their lives in the line of duty, there is a sense of rejoicing throughout the Pacific Rim as a new Jaeger joins the ranks of humanity's protectors. The legendary Brawler Yukon and Romeo Blue, America's first Jaeger, destroyers of three kaiju between them, are standing as sentries and guards of honor in front of the Kodiak Island Assembly Building, where the doors will soon open to reveal their newest companion."_

"_What do we know about Gipsy Danger?"_

"_Like all the Jaegers built so far, she's nuclear powered. She stands two-hundred-sixty feet tall and weighs in at nearly two thousand tons! It takes ten specially-designed heavy cargo helicopters to lift her. Her head is called the conn-pod, the control pod where the pilots are located. It's completely airtight and pressurized, so that the Jaeger can operate fully underwater or even theoretically in space."_

_"Her pilots are American Rangers Yancy and Raleigh Becket, graduates of the Jaeger Academy on December 24, 2016. They're brothers, actually from right here in Anchorage, Alaska, which has certainly inspired the local community who already shares their back yard with the Jaeger Academy and the PPDC's Proving Grounds. The younger brother, Raleigh Becket, is only eighteen years old, now the youngest active Jaeger pilot in the Defense Corps."_

"_Hey, kiddo_," Tendo heard Yancy say in a low voice. "_I'm proud of you, y'know_."

_D'awww! _By rights, Tendo should've launched into teasing, but he couldn't, not seeing the way Raleigh's pulse jumped on the monitors. He just exchanged a broad grin with the LOCCENT crew, and the meditech on duty pretended to wipe away a tear.

_"Let's switch to our correspondents at the other Shatterdomes - these are the Jaeger deployment facilities now on every major continent along the Pacific Ocean. All morning, the active Jaegers have been rolling out of their bays, keeping a tradition that started very early in those frantic first days of this program. Today, they're turning their gazes towards Alaska, everywhere they are - there's Cherno Alpha and Eden Assassin in Russia, looking to the East, Yankee Star in Los Angeles, facing North, Solar Prophet in Lima, Peru, facing North, these giant iron defenders of planet Earth, in six countries, four continents, all saying, 'Welcome, Gipsy Danger!'"_

"You better get going, Choi, or you'll miss Hail to the Chief," the LOCCENT crew warned.

Tendo paused. "You guys mind if I just watch with you from the cheap seats?" He'd been looking forward to all the press and VIP-spotting in the crowds, but now... it meant more to be in here. Like he was closer to Gipsy, Raleigh, and Yancy.

Priya gave him a knowing smile. "You're not the first one who's done that."

Some of the reporters outside had managed to get close to the crew in Gipsy's new uniforms. "_I'm standing here with Antwan Ferrier, one of the strike group personnel coordinators for Gipsy Danger. Antwan, can you tell me a little about what your job is?"_

_"Every Jaeger has a crew of hundreds of support personnel with different responsibilities when we're deployed. My job is to make sure everyone on the J-Tech crew and Strike Troops is where they're supposed to be, doing what they're supposed to do. There are four personnel coordinators for each Jaeger; they call us the cat herders!"_

The reporter laughed. _"And what about you?" _She shoved her microphone at random into the crowd of rowdy personnel. "_Everyone tell me what your job is!"_

_"I'm Cady Spencer from Portland Oregon, I'm a Local Command Center technician! They call us Jaeger Traffic Control!"_

_"I'm Chloe Warner from Atlanta, Georgia! I'm a trainee at K-Watch in Honolulu - they call us kaiju traffic control!"_

_"Christian Warner from Atlanta - I'm Chloe's brother. I'm a drive suit technician - I put the pilots INTO the Jaeger!_"

_"Nicola Harris from San Diego, I'm a Rescue/Recovery EMT!"_

_"Brandon Pines from Monterey, California, I'm a support chopper pilot!"_

"_This has to be a proud moment for all of you too! Are you excited?"_

_"WOOO! Yeah!" _

_"Most of us came through the Academy too but didn't make it to pilot. If you get through the first cut, you qualify as a PPDC officer," _Antwan explained. _"There are thousands of jobs that have to get done before a Jaeger can fight, so that's what we're here for!_"

"_Do you know Raleigh and Yancy Becket?"_

_"Yeah!"_

_"A lot of us were in their class, great guys!"_

_"They're amazing. They're tough, they're strong, they're smart, and also two of the nicest, most down-to-earth people you'll ever meet," _said Cady.

This time, Tendo let himself harass the conn-pod. "We looove our Becket boys!"

"_Awww, I'm getting all choked up in here!_" Raleigh laughed.

The parade of sentiment was finally halted as Marshall Gagnon called for attention, and everyone snapped into position for President Santos's arrival. A band out on the grounds in front of the VIP stands played _Hail to the Chief_, and the Corps mass-saluted.

Tendo stepped back so LOCCENT could murmur orders to Gipsy. "Ready for bay door opening in five...four... three... two... one..."

Fighter jets roared overhead in Vs as the Assembly Building doors opened to reveal Gipsy Danger, and she glided out into the sun on her crawler to the _Star Spangled Banner_. The throngs of civilians gathered on hilltops, roadsides, and ferries in the gulf went wild. On television, in LA, Tendo saw Tanisha and Caleb in front of Yankee Star with their crews, facing north, holding their salute.

Marshall Gagnon stepped up next to President Santos and spoke into the microphone. "_Brawler Yukon, step forward_."

The D'onofrios took the oldest Jaeger two paces forward, an almost-person-sized Melchizedek champagne bottle visible in his massive fist. All the wine enthusiasts in the Corps were probably weeping, Tendo thought with amusement.

"Gipsy Danger, are we ready and aligned?" Priya murmured.

"_Ready on your command_," said Yancy.

President Santos was openly beaming. "_I name this Jaeger Gipsy Danger. May God bless her and all who do battle in her, and save all who live under her protection_."

"Amen," Tendo said softly.

Priya leaned forward. "Annnd... Gipsy, go."

Under the smooth control of her right and left hemisphere, Gipsy Danger raised her massive arms and brought her hands together over her chest. They held the position, and Brawler shattered the bottle over her joined fists to an explosion of cheers and applause.

Another flight of jets roared overhead trailing red, white, and blue smoke, and Raleigh and Yancy painstakingly lowered Gipsy's arms and stepped down from her crawler to bring her front and center on the grounds. On the green light from LOCCENT, Yancy and Raleigh activated their external speakers and chorused, "_This is Gipsy Danger, under the command of Rangers Yancy and Raleigh Becket, reporting for duty_."

President Santos extended his arms. "_By the power vested in me by the United States of America and the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps, I declare you _active_, in the name of the United States of America, and in defense of all mankind_."

Tendo cheered along with everyone else in LOCCENT, as the crew gave the Jaegers the power-down order. "_Whew!_" he heard Raleigh say once the speakers were off.

"Your blood pressure's a little high, there, kids!" he called.

"Neural handshake deactivated. Okay, gentlemen, you may disengage and exit through the shoulder hatches," Priya told them. "Please don't fall off before we can retrieve you."

"_That'd be embarrassing as hell_," Raleigh observed as they climbed free of their rigs.

So followed the first of many more photo ops: the D'onofrios, Gages, and Beckets left their Jaegers outside to be admired, but climbed out through the escape hatches to stand on top for pictures. Tendo got a text message from Chloe Warner: _I'm kinda glad I didn't make the second cut! I'm afraid of heights! _He had to laugh. It did look a little scary, being up on top of those things, and he caught himself gnawing on his fingernails as the Jumphawks hovered down to pick up the pilots using really long ladders. They all made it safely into the choppers.

"Now, you better run for it," Priya told him. "You have to be there when you give 'em their jackets!"

Tendo bolted, and made it down to the lower level ahead of the pilots, who emerged from the bay doors to the _Stars and Stripes Forever _and still more roaring cheers. The D'onofrios and Gages all wore bomber jackets with their Jaeger's name, while the Beckets were just in their uniform jackets, but now the entire support crew of Gipsy Danger got to swarm Scramble Alley and present the Becket brothers with their own bomber gear in the strobe flash of millions of cameras.

"Welcome to the big leagues, brothers!" Tendo heard Bruce Gage shout over the racket as Lightcap embraced each of them.

* * *

><p>The day was a crazed, blissful blur of light and noise and elation for Raleigh. Despite the many blunders and frustrations of prepping, dealing with the media and the dignitaries wasn't as hard as he'd feared. They remembered how to salute (and when) for introductions to President Santos and a slew of generals, ambassadors, and superior officers. Neither of them said anything too stupid to the reporters, and they didn't turn too red the first time they were asked to autograph their own pictures by a crowd of giggling girls.<p>

It definitely got easier once the dignitaries moved off and all the formal stuff was done, and they could just mingle.

"So what happens now?" a reporter asked them as they hung out among a crowd of their own personnel.

"Gipsy's being prepped for liftoff down to Los Angeles so she's there tomorrow for the grand opening of the Shatterdome," Yancy explained, gesturing to the crews now preparing the hookups for her chopper fleet. "We'll be flying down with them, forming the Los Angeles strike group with Yankee Star."

"So you know the pilots of Yankee Star?"

"Yeah, we've been training with them for weeks. The whole Jaeger Program is working on group operations so we can back each other up," Raleigh confirmed.

"Is this because of what happened to Talon Tasmania?"

_Uh... _Raleigh glanced quickly at Yancy, who gave a smooth reply. "We're always working on finding ways to beat the kaiju and minimize losses. Every engagement teaches us things about them and about the Jaegers, even the Guayaquil tragedy."

"Did you know Miguel and Maria Blanco?"

"No, Raleigh and I never met them, but they were the creators of a lot of the techniques we learned here. All this is in honor of every life we've lost to the kaiju."

They had planned on a wild party for the plane ride from Anchorage back to LA with the crew, but the passenger cabin was dead silent within minutes of liftoff, because everyone fell asleep. "Being famous takes it out of you," the Gages told them.

Suze and Devi Hassan and Chloe Warner even got to come with them, since their trips back to Australia and Hawaii had a "layover" in California. As they were coming in for landing in LA, everyone finally recovered enough energy to catch up. "We really had to wheedle Marshall Ketteridge to let us come up from Sydney," Devi told them. "Luckily, he owed us a few favors by now."

"More than a few, since nobody's brained Scott Hansen yet," growled Suze.

"Oooh, what's this? Tell!" Tendo ordered.

"I can guess," said Priya, accompanying them to supervise the installment of Gipsy into her bay. "I've met the Hansens."

"Hercules - the older one - he's quite nice," said Devi. "We've learned a lot from him. Scott's very skilled, I suppose, but _my God, _that man is a lecher! He only just keeps his hands to himself after repeated warnings, and you might as well be drifting with him; he doesn't bother to pretend he's not undressing everything female with every glance."

"Oh, one of those." Yancy shook his head. "You'd think a Mark-1 Ranger could just go to a bar if he wants some play and take his pick instead of harassing people who aren't interested." He grinned at the Hassans. "I'd offer to have a word with him, but I know you two can handle yourselves."

"With a kneecap to the groin if he gets in our personal space, believe it," Suze growled. "Bloody hell, I even told him I don't bat for his team and he _still _hits on me!"

"I think you should marry one of them," said Christian Warner suddenly.

"Huh?!"

"Then your name would be Hassan Hansen."

_Groooooan. _"Chloe, hit your brother, please."

"Aye-aye, Ranger." Chloe obliged with an open-handed _whap _upside Christian's head.

Raleigh was feeling generous to his brother, and offered to bunk with somebody else overnight, but Yancy admitted he was too run down to do anything other than sleep. They all crashed early and gave the visitors a rushed tour amid the frenzied pre-opening prep the following morning.

* * *

><p><em>Los Angeles Shatterdome, Opening Day…<br>July 11, 2017…_

LA Opening Day was more of the same - cheering throngs, flashing cameras, brass bands, fighter jet flyovers, and waving flags with the Jaegers looming over it all like giant sentries. Tanisha and Caleb's public persona was a little more enthusiastic than they acted when there weren't cameras around, although at least the reporters who'd managed to get on-site for the event refrained from taking cheap shots – mostly.

Yankee's crew were gratified when one of the reporters tried to bait Raleigh: "Are you at all worried that your senior team has never fought a kaiju?"

"No, not at all," Raleigh said firmly. "The whole point of this is to get _ahead _of the kaiju - lots of teams haven't had an engagement yet. But we're training every day in simulations, analyzing the attacks that have already happened. We have their back and they have ours, and we have complete faith in each other."

"Nice, kiddo. Thanks," Tanisha murmured shortly after.

"I meant it," he told her.

"I know you did."

The selfie that the two Ranger teams did that night from the Dome roof overlooking Yankee and Gipsy with fireworks going off above them trended on Twitter.

The next morning, they were all incredibly tired, but Marshall Ramirez had kept her promise to reopen the access roads and the formerly-public parks surrounding the Shatterdome grounds. "The hunt clubs are still pissed because the firearm exclusion zone cut off their access to a couple of the game preserves nearby, but they can still camp and picnic and whatnot," said Caleb.

"There's a big crowd out there this morning, hoping to catch some action," Penny Jefferson reported. "Lot of kids hanging out by the west fence."

"Hey, Gipsy. How 'bout team drills up by the west fence?" Tanisha said at once.

"You're the senior, Yankee. Lead on."

In a lot of ways... it was even better than the brass bands and ticker tape, Raleigh decided. Just dozens of kids, descended from the various nearby neighborhoods, families with picnic lunches in the parks to the west of the base. No one had special VIP passes today, they were just wanting to catch a look and going absolutely nuts when they recognized the four pilots doing _katas_ out on the pavement only a hundred yards away. The Rangers switched to the grass on the edge of the airstrip and sparred in teams, getting cheers and oohs and aahs, and Raleigh saw the perimeter MPs grinning occasionally.

_"__Remember what it's all for," _Bruce Gage had told them above LA and Santa Monica.

These people were obviously local. This was their home. There were bunkers being build deep underground all up and down the California coast, new evacuation routes being planned, but when a kaiju came ashore, none of it would be enough. Hong Kong had established one of the first comprehensive civil defense plans, and even with Horizon Brave taking Reckoner down within an hour of landfall, hundreds had still died. There was a swath of destruction in that city, an even larger one uninhabitable in Guayaquil between the contamination caused by Vaulimi and Talon Tasmania's reactor.

The J-Tech crews were busy and frazzled getting Gipsy properly installed and making sure all the systems of Scramble Alley were in place for deployment, and they kicked all non-essential personnel out. So, after two rounds in the simulator - and two kills with Yankee and Gipsy surviving both - the off-duty crews just left the Dome and walked around the base perimeter, waving to the onlookers, posing for pictures, running up to sign autographs in a rush until the MPs laughingly hauled them away again.

* * *

><p><em>August 2017…<em>

Team Gipsy and Team Yankee conspired to keep Raleigh distracted for several hours when the World War II map arrived so Yancy could set it up on a new table in the rec room. Once it was ready, some of the history buffs were already planning the Battle of Midway for Jaegers and kaiju.

When they let him back into the rec room, Raleigh's speechless, jaw-dropped delight was priceless.

"I gotta keep insulin handy around them sometimes," Tendo heard Tanisha mutter as Raleigh tackle-hugged his brother.

"I know, it's sickening," Penny Jefferson agreed, but everyone on Team Yankee was grinning.

They started doing full-on strike group deployment drills one week in, and once they met all the timing standards, finally got to do exercises on the grounds with both Jaegers. No collisions resulted, though they had a few close calls and some maneuvers that had to be re-arranged. Those practices drew huge crowds on shore and off.

"_Hey, Tendo, is Carolina still in LOCCENT?_" Yancy asked one day when they saw honest-to-god school buses bringing kids in to see the exercises.

"Yeah, she is. What's up?"

"_Tell her I think I like being famous!_"

Carolina laughed. "It's closing day for a bunch of the summer camps before school starts again," Brady Harris told them from Yankee's LOCCENT station. "This is what everybody wants as a field trip: to go and see the Jaegers_._"

The pod-to-pod comm buzzed. "_Hey, Gipsy_," said Caleb. "_I think now's the time, don't you? You know, we're coming into orange alert_." It had now been ten weeks since the last attack, and K-Watch was putting its guard up again.

"_Yeahh,_" Raleigh said. "_We can't let it get ahead of us_."

Yancy added seriously, "_Gotta cover all our bases, make sure we've taken care of everything_."

"Taken care of what?" asked Tendo in confusion.

"_We're backing off, Gipsy. Giving you some space_," Tanisha informed them.

Tendo thought he heard the Beckets snickering, and glanced up at the external video feed.

Then the speakers exploded into noise, and the crowds sitting on the grass, pavement, and vehicles around the LA Shatterdome fence erupted to their feet as Gipsy Danger started doing the Electric Boogaloo.

In LOCCENT, Tendo just gibbered incoherently for almost twenty minutes. Marshall Ramirez simply face-palmed, while the PR reps tried (and failed) to pretend they weren't loving it. The crews for both Jaegers were whooping and dancing up and down Scramble Alley for the rest of the day.

Yankee Star wasn't flexible enough for it (their dance had been the hand jive), but after Gipsy took a bow, she came up next to her fellow Jaeger, and they got the whole crowd of fence-side watchers doing the wave. The New York Times had them on the front page the next day with their arms in the air, side-by-side, with the headline: **_America's Idols_**.

They were the number one video on YouTube set to three different pieces of music for a month.

* * *

><p><em>October 15, 2017…<em>

Vulcan Specter was slated for an October launch - or as soon as possible after the next attack. Shaolin Rogue had launched in Hong Kong on September 15. It was as grand, celebrated, and joyful as Gipsy's launch had been, but even as they all stood outside the LA Shatterdome with their Jaegers facing west towards China, every Ranger was visualizing the war clocks ticking past four months.

By the beginning of October, nobody went off-base even for a drink - and nobody drank on-base either. They drilled, they trained, they exercised and went to bed on time and ate all their vegetables. They did remote team sims with other Jaegers at other Shatterdomes.

In mid-October, Marshall Pentecost showed up with a couple of other brass for an inspection, which was annoying and frustrating, because they all had to toe the line.

However, Tendo was sure he saw Pentecost crack a smile when he saw the map table in the rec room and all the Jaegers at their proper deployment positions - plus Optimus Prime in the North Pole. Talon Tasmania was next to him, and somebody had made a little halo for her out of a silver pipe cleaner. All the previous kaiju were strung up from a ceiling pipe with a sign that read _Kaiju Ye Be Warned._

Tendo, Penny, and Antwan pretended to be working while eavesdropping on Pentecost's conversations with Ramirez. "How are their scores on the emergency scenario drills?"

"Very high for both crews; I think they've internalized the procedures completely. The engineers have some concerns about the placement of Gipsy's gear. The separated floor means that unless they have time for a full-length power-down, they'll have to jump from the rig to get the medkit or their portable O2. After the next stand-down, J-Tech wants some changes."

"Done. Yankee is also slated for evac pod installation. We may have to bring Romeo Blue to Los Angeles for coverage. How are the pilots testing in medical?"

"Daily metharocin, and radiation levels in the conn-pods are well within the safety band. They are higher in Yankee Star, but we've got them in regular check-ups. We did an early medical workup last week; Davis was down with Jaeger-head, so we canceled their team simulator exercise."

"She has my sympathies; both of Solar Prophet's Rangers have had it. What about the others?"

"Yancy Becket had it at the Academy; Raleigh hasn't yet, but he might. Caleb gets migraines, so he may be safe - "

The Breach alarm went off. "Thar she blows!" yelled Antwan, putting on his fisherman's hat as everyone scrambled for alert stations.

"Figures we'd get _our_ first alert while the honchos are in the building," Tendo heard Raleigh mutter as everyone gathered in the war room.

"I know, right? Now they'll be here for days," Caleb grumbled.

Christian already had a text from Chloe in Honolulu. "Damn. No clear direction yet, but sonar shows it's a big puppy. Maybe the biggest one yet."

They all put phones and tablets aside and snapped to attention when the Marshalls came in. "It sounds like this will be the occasion to introduce the Serizawa Scale," said Marshall Ramirez. "It's K-Science's latest effort to categorize the size and threat level early on. They've numbered the categories as one through five, like hurricanes. So far, the largest one recorded has been Reckoner - a Category II."

There was heavy silence as everyone digested that. Tanisha slowly raised a hand. "Sir... is K-Science expecting them to get _that_ much bigger?"

Ramirez and Pentecost just nodded. "Jesus," Yancy muttered.

Ramirez, unlike Pentecost, was more understanding of the human frailties of her underlings, and probably could tell that the superiors' presence was only adding to the tension. "Get comfortable, crews, but don't go far. We won't have an update for several hours. You know the drill by now." She ushered the brass out.

The next update had a possible detection off Palau, to the southwest of the Breach, but there was another complication: no less than two major typhoons in the South Pacific, disrupting currents and interfering with the instruments. "Man, this is fun," grumbled Antwan.

The hours crept by with no new update. October 15 gave way to October 16. Marshall Ramirez had them start duty shifts with sleep breaks, and ordered the Rangers to go to bed.

"Note to selves: requisition cots," said Antwan to the other personnel crews. A lot of the staff were finding it comforting to curl up on the floor in groups rather than go back to their rooms.

Tendo did manage to sleep a little, and found Raleigh in the rec room mid-morning on October 17, moving the Jaegers to their various real-life locations on the table map. "Did you rest?" Carolina asked him sternly.

Raleigh nodded. "Not great, but I did."

Next to him, Christian was putting coins on the map. "Chloe says the last station that picked the bogey up was Palau, but it was way off and he might've been moving south. This is where all the monitoring stations are."

"It's been over thirty-six hours since the last ping," said Caleb, shuffling in looking like he'd slept in his clothes. "Where the hell is he?"

"Could he possibly have made landfall without us knowing it?" Antwan asked Christian.

"I'll ask her. Can't imagine it'd be anywhere near civilization," he mused, sending a text. "Chlo may be asleep. They've got the watch crews on rest shifts now too - oh, she's up." He chuckled. "She ain't sleeping any better than we are. She says maybe Antarctica, he could get on land without us seeing, but they've got satellites looking for him too."

Yancy and Tanisha wandered in a few minutes later, all looking like they'd slept badly too. "You think the Marshalls are getting any sleep?"

"Last I heard, Pentecost was on the horn to Lima ordering everything that could fly to deploy for spotters," said Penny.

Raleigh was IMing the Hassans. "It's still night out there, but the weather's shit in Sydney. Devi thinks that's part of the problem; the typhoons have a lot of the ship and air traffic stopped, so we're not getting our usual tips."

"Anyone would think kaiju plan this crap," Tanisha sighed.

Christian's phone buzzed, making him jump, and as he answered, they heard a woman yell on the other end. Everyone froze, and Christian's eyes widened. "She says it's us!"

Before anyone had a chance to move or even process it, the full-blown, red-alert alarm went off.

_"ALL PERSONNEL TO BATTLE STATIONS. EXTREME RED ALERT, INCOMING KAIJU. ALL PERSONNEL TO BATTLE STATIONS."_

_"YANKEE STAR, REPORT TO BAY 01. GIPSY DANGER, REPORT TO BAY 03. KAIJU, CODENAME YAMARASHI, INCOMING."_

_"ALL PERSONNEL TO BATTLE STATIONS. EXTREME RED ALERT, INCOMING KAIJU. ALL PERSONNEL TO BATTLE STATIONS."_

For a split second, they all just stood there. Then Christian yelled, "SHIT! Bogey's at San Nicholas!"

Less than a hundred miles offshore. "MOVE!" Tanisha roared, and the spell broke.

"YANKEE!" Yancy bellowed as they stampeded into the hallway, and the teams made to split for their bays. Tendo had no idea if this was some ritual the four Rangers had invented in their sims, or if it was just spur of the moment. Tanisha and Caleb turned to meet them, and the quartet did a four-way fist bump before flying off in opposite directions. Just like that, they were gone.

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming Mid-Week: _**_Yamarashi. Gipsy Danger, Yankee Star, and the Los Angeles Shatterdome must put all their training put to the test against the largest kaiju to emerge from the Breach targets their city in _**_Chapter Twenty-Three: This Is For Real_****_._**

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.

Penelope "Penny" Jefferson: Yankee Star's LOCCENT Support Chief, former Chief Warrant Officer with the US Marines. Mid-30s, African-American from Los Angeles.

Brady Harris: Yankee Star's Public Relations Representative. Late 30s, African-American from San Diego.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative. Mid-60s, Mexican-American from San Francisco, survived K-Day and came out of retirement to join the PPDC.

Antwan Ferrier: Gipsy Danger Personnel Coordinator, directs and organizes Strike Troopers. Age 39, Jamaican national.

Brandon Pines: Gipsy Danger support chopper pilot, early 30s from Monterey, CA, transferred from the US Air Force.

Cady Spencer: Gipsy Danger LOCCENT Technician (along with Tendo Choi), Filipino-American, age 27 from Portland, Oregon.

Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, age 26, African-American from Atlanta, Georgia, brother of Chloe Warner.

Chloe Warner: K-Watch trainee in Honolulu, transferred after she and her brother Christian failed to become Rangers at Academy. Age 24.

Marshall Ana Ramirez: Commanding Officer of the Los Angeles Shatterdome, formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army, mid-40s, Mexican-American from Arizona.

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Rangers, pilots of Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark-3. First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 27 and 25, graduated Jaeger Academy in the same class as the Beckets.

Priya Katwal: Senior J-Tech Engineer, former NASA employee who helped design and build Gipsy Danger's conn-pod and life support systems, mid-50s, first-generation Indian-American.


	23. This Is For Real

_**Author's Notes:** Wow, thank you all for the amazing response to last chapter! Please keep the feedback coming; it means everything. The events in this chapter are based on the description in the novelization of Gipsy Danger's battle with Yamarashi._

**Chapter Twenty-Three: This Is For Real**

Half of Raleigh's mind was in a frenzy, spinning and whirling no less than when the sirens had gone off in Anchorage for Karloff in 2015. But muscle memory took over, and he found himself next to Yancy in the drive suit room, going through the motions for suiting up, following every step and movement as if he were perfectly calm.

_We're being deployed. _It was like the grinding, blaring alert sirens had taken up residence in his skull and were repeating that sentence over and over. _This is it. We're being deployed. _

It wore down as he had to focus on his movements, and the others also calmed down from the shock of the alert. They could hear Marshall Ramirez giving orders over the intercom, and even heard Tanisha chiming in from Bay 01 about the LA evacuation. She wasn't supposed to do that, but... _Fuck protocol, this is her home. These are her people, her cities. She knows this place. _

A couple of the techs monitored the updates from LOCCENT as they suited up. "Bogey now making landfall on Santa Catalina Island, moving through Two Harbors. We have spotters on him... quadruped, estimated length six hundred feet, estimated height two hundred feet. Heavy scaled armor, forming spines on the back, four eyes, elongated head."

"Picture!" someone called, and Raleigh and Yancy paused from taking their helmets to get a look.

"Yamarashi? More like hedgehog-o-saurus," Yancy remarked. In the time it took them to take a glance, the kaiju was back in the water and out of sight. "C'mon, let's hurry it up."

Christian wound up in front of Raleigh, helping him into the battle armor, and gave him a small smile. "You're ready for this, bro. Kick his ugly ass."

Raleigh grinned, and looked at Yancy. Ever the restrained one, his brother just nodded.

"How fast's he swimming?" Raleigh asked as they put their helmets on and let the neural gel finish linking them up.

"Gipsy One, online. Gipsy Two, online."

They walked quickly in their armor for the conn-pod door as one of the techs hurried past them with his rig kit. "Estimated speed forty miles per hour," he told them, and Yancy shot Raleigh a sharp look and quickened his pace.

Unless it slowed down or really changed direction, Yamarashi'd be in Los Angeles before either Jaeger could get in front of it. _Don't panic. You know your job, just do it. _He wrenched his attention off everything except the pre-deployment checks. Rig connections, harness and input cradles, pre-link drift analysis. _Feel _out the systems, they'd been drilled in training, especially the neural ones. It was internal awareness that would more likely give the warning if something was wrong.

"Right harness checks complete. Rig fully locked," announced Yancy's pod team.

"Gipsy One, all clear," Yancy confirmed.

"Left harness checks complete. Rig fully locked," said Raleigh's team.

"Gipsy Two, all clear," said Raleigh. One of the guys met his gaze and made a quick gesture as he walked away. Raleigh thought it was some kind of blessing.

"_Securing conn-pod_," said Gipsy's mission controller. "_Preparing for drop_."

Raleigh's hand went automatically to the command console, and his eyes found Yancy's also hovering over his release button. "Ready."

"Release for drop."

Gravity plummeted away with the conn-pod, and metal shrieked as they sped up, then slowed on the approach. In the background, he heard the drop commands being given for Yankee. Raleigh watched and _felt _the gears and locks fall into place, sealing them into Gipsy's shoulders. Gipsy's turbines and engines roared to life as Yancy confirmed the lock was complete, and the command console and HUD activated the handshake prep sequence.

Gipsy's lift gears were already active, and the display showed the LOCCENT radar indicating the two Jumphawk fleets already in formation outside with their rigs lowered.

The internal Dome display flashed white as the first crawler guided Yankee Star out of Bay 01 into Scramble Alley. Raleigh felt only a faint shudder as Gipsy's crawler started after them. The west-facing bay doors opened to glaring light, making them wince from the afternoon sun and dim the external screen.

"_Where's our bogey?_" Tanisha asked.

"_Right on the Avalon-Long Beach Ferry Route, Yankee One, direction north-northwest. Estimated time to landfall, thirty minutes. Forecast location, Long Beach_."

It was all Raleigh could do not to fidget as they rolled out into the sunlight, and the choppers came down to pick them up.

"_This is Drop Crew Alpha. We have Yankee Star locked and ready for liftoff_," said the hawk crew leader.

They heard the clunks and grinding of the lines and magnets connecting outside the pod. "_Drop Crew Beta, Gipsy Danger locked and ready for liftoff_."

"_Drop crews, this is Marshall Ana Ramirez, you are cleared for takeoff._" The pod swayed gently around them as the ground dropped away. "_Rangers, prepare for neural handshake_."

The handshake display took over the front screens, two brains and all the connections with Gipsy's systems. "_Gipsy, this is Beta station. Initiating handshake in fifteen...fourteen..._"

Raleigh looked at Yancy. "We're ready, kiddo," his brother said firmly.

Raleigh smiled. "Yeah, we are." _Here we go._

They plunged into the headspace.

_Incoming kaiju... extreme red alert..._

_"Codename Yamarashi..."_

_How'd it get so close without us seeing it?_

_Little Jaegers and kaiju on a map - "Hey, Rals, look what just came in the mail!" Gipsy Danger in miniature. Now in pride of place next to Yankee in Los Angeles..._

_"I think I like being famous."_

_Yankee Star was built for sharpshooting... Gipsy Danger was built for brawling... _

_..."Two completely untried Jaegers and crews to defend the entire West Coast!" _

_We're ready we're ready readyreadyready..._

"_Gipsy, you with me? Neural handshake strong and holding_." There was one brain on the screen now. They were two hundred sixty feet tall, with skin of iron and muscles of steel and arms loaded with plasma generators. They were flying, vibrating slightly from the motion of the Jumphawks.

"Right hemisphere, calibrating," said Yancy, in Raleigh's ears and also in his head.

"Left hemisphere, calibrating," he answered automatically.

_Careful of calibration maneuvers in mid-air, don't jolt the choppers. _They'd practiced it plenty of times. Ahead of them, Yankee Star was moving her arms, bringing her hands carefully together as the skyline of Los Angeles and Santa Monica spread out below them.

There was already smoke over the beach front on the south side. "_Yankee Star and Gipsy Danger, you're being deployed to the mouth of the Los Angeles River for intercept_," Marshall Ramirez announced. "_Your orders are to repel and destroy the target by any means necessary. Terminal Island evacuation is eighty-five percent complete. Mainland evacuation is fourteen percent complete_."

"_Mother fuck. What's our ETA, LOCCENT?_" Tanisha asked.

"_Nine minutes. Kaiju has made landfall on the Long Beach waterfront, moving west parallel to the beach_."

_Let's make our game plan now, _Yancy said/thought at him. "Call it, Yankee."

It didn't take them long. "_Deploy on our left flank, Gipsy. Try and cut him off if he runs north into the city, but do _not _cross in front of us, understood?_"

"Copy that." Raleigh pulled up a map schematic to overlay the display. "Target's still going parallel to Ocean Boulevard heading towards the arena. We can intercept before he goes much further inshore."

"_LOCCENT, tell law enforcement to get everyone underground south of Sixth Street, keep evacuating to the north_," Tanisha ordered. "_We're firing as soon as he's in range_."

"_Roger that, Yankee Star_. _Strike troops are online with civil defense._"

Closer... closer... closer, they descended over the city. Yancy pulled up the harbor display. "What ship is that?" he asked, both of them focusing at once on a silhouette much bigger than most of the other watercraft traffic.

"_Queen Mary, actually a hotel_," said a familiar voice. It was Tendo, sounding impressively calm. They were probably at all-hands-on-deck ordering the evacuations from LOCCENT. "_She's fully evacuated, thank God_."

"Definitely thank God. Bogey's heading right at her."

Sucked to be the White Star Line or whoever owned ocean liners nowadays, but Raleigh hoped Yamarashi would get himself distracted with the big ship long enough for the Jaegers to get themselves in front of him. _Man, Antwan's gonna have a fit. _ The kaiju plowed right through the ship, splitting it in half like a matchstick toy.

"_We're releasing you over the river in ninety seconds, moving into position_," the Hawk crews announced.

"_Horn silence, Gipsy!_" Tanisha ordered. "_I don't want that bastard running before we're in position_."

"Copy that," Raleigh withdrew his hand from the rescue horn controls. He loved blasting them (and by now, everybody knew it) but Tanisha had a point.

They came down over the river past the ship terminals and finally got a clear view of the kaiju, which did resemble some kind of hybrid turtle-porcupine-dinosaur. It was ripping its way through the waterfront buildings, glass and metal glittering in the late-afternoon sun and flashing off the water. Smoke billowed along the path it had left behind, and for a split-second, Raleigh knew, _knew _this was no sim, and there were _people _down there -

_Focus, Rals, _Yancy urged.

Nothing else, he had to block it all out. Just him/Yance/Gipsy and Yankee Star and that big ugly monster. He felt the wash of Yancy's approval, warm and steady and driven, and heard their Jumphawk crew start the final countdown for release. "We're ready."

They plunged into the shallow water between two bridges with Yankee Star in front of them, just in time to see Yamarashi blunder straight through the bridge to the south. This was a good spot. The kaiju was moving westward onto the island occupied by shipping terminals and equipment, not hotels and condos. Lower buildings, less obstruction for Yankee's missiles, clearer spaces for Gipsy to maneuver.

"_Gipsy, keep north, cut him off if he runs! We're engaging!_"

Then there wasn't time to talk or even really think, just move. Yankee Star was bottom-heavy for stability, equipped with everything from missiles to mortars to bona-fide lasers, but she wouldn't be able to move very fast if the target made a run for it. She unleashed a barrage that set off some impressive fireworks against the kaiju's side, but although it roared and blundered away, they all knew it once it wasn't injured. Bastard was built like a turtle with overlapping armor plates.

_This is a problem. _They stayed outside Yankee's line of fire and strode ahead towards the port to cut Yamarashi's escape off. If he got across the island, he'd be in the heavily populated area again. Yankee's laser sizzled a groove into the kaiju's flank, but he ducked his head and sped up. This was a very big problem.

Tanisha and Caleb knew it. "_Gipsy, move in!_"

"Intercepting."

They charged. Yancy was swinging his fist even as Raleigh began charging the left cannon, and the impact against Yamarashi's head made their teeth rattle. But they did knock the kaiju off balance, and Raleigh scanned up and down his neck, looking for the most vulnerable spot. "Belly. Get him up!"

Yancy swung and caught the bony chin, pushing, pushing, the momentum and weight of the monster sending them lurching back and forth, but its underside was exposed, and the plasma sizzled through Raleigh's arm, building and building -

"Firing plasma cannon!" The cannon discharged, a blazing bolt hitting the plates, then another, then another, and the kaiju's roar was deafening. But as it was thrown backwards and rolled away, although its belly was blackened, they could already tell they hadn't penetrated.

This was going to be very close combat. They were lunging after it on pure instinct, grabbing for the stubby tail and nearly getting thrown themselves when they caught him. Raleigh locked his fist around one of the horny spines and _pulled_, Yancy dug his leg back into the ground, ripping up concrete and dirt and the foundation of a building - the kaiju's armor gave and tore, and the beast roared. It was in pain, and that was wonderful. But the wound wasn't big, and probably not near any vital organs.

On the edges of their/Gipsy's vision, Yankee was catching up, but Yamarashi wasn't about to make it easy for two attackers to give him a pounding. He wrenched free, and tried to surge towards the big freeway full of cars. They threw themselves forward and simply tackled him.

"_Gipsy, down!_"

They ducked, using the kaiju's own body as their shield and felt another round of shells from Yankee blast against Yamarashi's wounded underside. The impact nearly put him on top of them, but they scrambled free and pivoted around to get in front of him again and give Yankee another clear shot.

Another red laser line streaked through the air and slashed along Yamarashi's neck. Again, it left a burned groove, and the kaiju roared in pain, but the damned armor held. They were moving parallel to the freeway now, smashing through oil tanks - there was an idea. "Yankee, the tanks!"

"_We got you!_" It took both of them two tries to get Yamarashi on his side and enough force to overbalance him, and both Jaegers took some powerful dents from the blows. Throwing the kaiju onto the huge tanks set off a massive explosion that knocked Gipsy over backwards, but Yamarashi was already clambering free. "_You guys okay?_" Yankee caught him from the side and threw her full weight into his neck to knock him away from them.

"We're fine!" Raleigh grunted, and they scrambled to their feet. Yamarashi was more black than green now, bellowing in pain, but still very much alive and mobile.

Yancy didn't bother with trying to charge the cannons again, just grabbed a slab of steel wreckage, and they swung it with all their strength, aiming for the thick neck. It put another gash in the armor, but still wasn't giving them any blue. "We gotta pin him," he panted.

"_We see it_." Yankee was trying to close again, but the bastard was trying to run.

Gipsy had to more or less dive in front of him, and he pile drove them into a cargo terminal. A crane snapped off as they fell together, and Yancy just managed to get the armor of their right shoulder up to keep it from hitting the pod - the thick steel wire still bit into Raleigh's/Gipsy's hand, _OW!_ That hurt.

_Wire. _Raleigh was never sure after whether he or Yancy thought of _The Godfather_ first, but their eyes fell on the groove that Yankee's laser had cut into the kaiju's thick neck, on the thin points of overlap for the bony plates - _yes. _

Raleigh slammed his elbow into the kaiju's face, driving it backward into the churned-up mud - Yancy grabbed another crane, gripping its supports and ripping it free. "Gonna garrote this bastard!"

Yamarashi wrenched his face away as they fought to hang on and get the crane around his neck, and then - "_GIPSY, FREEZE!_"

They planted their feet, sinking into the mud, and Yankee's laser passed directly over Raleigh's arm, so close that he could feel it singe, and burned straight into one of the four blazing eyes. The kaiju's screaming recoil nearly flipped them over his head. Its front leg slashed at theirs, catching their right knee with its claws, and slicing through the iron into the hydraulics.

"AH! FUCK!_" _They buckled, pain lancing through Yancy's knee, and Raleigh instinctively leaned to take the weight to the left, but they both felt it, the crane shifting in their hand, the kaiju's tortured throes putting him right where they needed him - they swung and Raleigh got his arm around the thing's neck, feeling the spines and bones bruising into his shoulders, but he had the other end of the crane, and they _pulled - _

Another laser fire from Yankee singed across Yamarashi's face, dangerously close to their own, but it put out another eye. The wire slipped down the smooth bones into the grooves of scales and laser burns, and the kaiju's dense flesh _finally_ began to tear. "_You got him! You got him! Hang on!_"

Raleigh and Yancy were yelling from the sheer effort of hanging on, straining as Kaiju Blue began to gush, sizzling their hands and arms - the kaiju's head was being pulled back as they slid to the side, digging their legs deeper into the mud. _"Duck!_" Caleb shouted, and they did, and another mortar round hit Yamarashi in the face, knocking his head away and giving them still more pressure on the wound they were opening in his neck.

Blue, blue, blue everywhere, burning and sizzling, and there were alarms starting to blare as it cascaded over their head, but they could hear Caleb and Tanisha shouting, "_Almost there! Almost there!_" and LOCCENT in their ears, urging them to hang on -

Then they had nothing to brace against and fell on their hands and knees, the crane and that wonderful wire still in their hands, bent and warped and smoking, and blue everywhere, fountains in front of their face, and a mountain of flesh and bone split and fallen in front of them -

"Warning: conn-pod structural failure imminent."

Kaiju Blue all around them, over their head, sizzling, burning, dissolving - it _hurt _-

"_GIPSY, GET IN THE WATER!_" Tanisha's roar was impossible to ignore even with alarms screaming and LOCCENT yelling and their own heads pounding. They staggered away, blundering and limping on Yancy's damaged leg, but the water was there. They simply fell into it, past the shattered wrecks of boats and ships, and they rolled, over and over as it washed cool and soothing around their iron skin, taking the burning, sizzling heat away.

It was close, too close, and they kept rolling until the burning stopped, sweeping their arms up to shake it all loose. "_Gipsy? Raleigh, Yance, you okay?!_" Caleb called.

They fumbled through wreckage and grease, swaying as they pulled themselves upright, senses reorienting. Terminal Island, the cargo port smoldering rubble and shattered steel, and a massive, blackened, bony thing still gushing blue, Yankee Star coming around it towards them, helicopters hovering overhead, sparkling in the sun.

In front of them, the HUD display showed no kaiju signature. That thing wasn't moving. It wouldn't move again.

No signature. They'd killed a kaiju.

Dazed, exhilarated, Raleigh blinked and looked to his right. Yancy looked back and just shrugged, pure cool. "Job's done."

Alarms shrieked - they blinked, still panting - "Warning: Left side oxygen compromised."

"_Raleigh, you've got Blue in your oxygen, disconnect!_" LOCCENT yelled. "_Disconnect now!_"

Blue. His eyes flew to the line that connected him to his O2 - blue. Blue in his line.

Half-drained adrenaline roared back to life. "RALS!" Yancy shouted, both in his ears and in his head, but Raleigh moved on autopilot.

His left hand slapped down on the tube - _turn/twist/pop_ - "Oxygen Disconnected," said the pod calmly, the only calm voice anywhere. Everyone else was yelling in his ears and in his head. His right hand slammed down on the console to deactivate the handshake and release him from the rig.

Sixty seconds from emergency disconnect to get to the portable tank. Muscle memory. The drift surged like a wave, then flooded away as if a dam had broken. Then Yancy was gone from his head, and Gipsy was gone from his body, and he was just Raleigh in the harness again.

There was a gap between the rigs and the pod floor; he disengaged - "Malfunction: Motion Rig controls. No hydraulic pressure."

There were things going wrong, faults in the electronics from the Blue that had compromised the outer hull. The rig unlocked, but not completely. He had sixty seconds to get to the portable tank. Yancy wasn't gone, he was stuck too, the hydraulics and electronics that operated the conn-pod motion rig were still failing from the Blue - but Raleigh was mostly free.

His eyes locked on the portable tank, and he braced with his good leg and jumped. Something _popped, _and he fell, grunting, the remaining wind left him as he hit the floor, but he was there. One hand yanked off his helmet, the other popped the mask free of the portable tank and pulled it to him -

With a soft, soothing hiss, the mask sealed around his face, and he could breathe. _Breathe. _In and out, head swimming, vision blurry with sweat in his eyes.

He blinked it away, and there was Yancy. Not cool anymore. Eyes wide and wild, trying to get his harness unlocked. "Raleigh? _Rals?!_" For the first time all day, Yancy sounded flat-out scared.

"I'm okay," he croaked.

"_Gipsy Danger! Report, what's happening?!_" It was Marshall Ramirez.

Raleigh fumbled to reach for the com above the emergency supply and _OH, FUCK, _that hurt, something was not right with his leg.

And... he could smell something. That acrid, sulfuric, nasty stench that had been duplicated for them in training just so they'd know, just so they'd be warned what Kaiju Blue smelled like - and how very, very bad it could be if they were close enough to smell it. If you could smell it, you could inhale it.

The line on the floor against his rig was tinged blue. It had sealed automatically. But the line from his mask to the portable tank, fogged with his breath... tinged blue. The portable tank was sealed.

The blue vapor was coming from him.

_"Stay calm if you inhale it,"_ the instructors had said in emergency training. _"Rapid breathing increases lung and blood contamination." _

Pain shot up his right leg as he shifted his weight to reach the comm. "LOCCENT, my O2 line got Kaiju Blue in it." His voice sounded so level. "I'm - " he glanced at the tank clock. " - Ninety seconds into the portable. No distress, but I'm exhaling blue vapor." He heard a chorus of hisses on the speakers. "And I've injured my leg, the rigs are locked. Yancy's still in; I don't think I can walk."

"_Hang on, Gipsy. We're going to med-evac you immediately. Can you reach the monitors from where you are, Raleigh?_"

"Yeah." He fumbled for it and got his glove off to slip one onto his hand.

"_Okay, your vitals are stable. Keep it together, you're doing perfect - Yancy, stop struggling. We'll have you out in minutes._"

Yancy couldn't get loose; Raleigh knew that without even having to look.

"_What can we do?_"

"_Back off for us, Yankee, we need to get in close. This is Whiskey Gamma Rescue/Recovery, coming in to hover on your shoulder_."

"Rals?" He felt… odd. As if Yancy was still echoing in his head even though the handshake was disconnected. He was there on the floor, but also stuck in the harness. He was trying to stay calm, but he was scared. He was hurting; he hated seeing him hurt. He was scared; he hated seeing him scared. He was still afloat in drift space and couldn't reach his brother to ground them.

Clunks and thuds echoed as something hit them from the outside; they both jumped. "External hatch entry," the conn-pod AI informed them.

They'd never imagined this. Being in the same pod and not able to reach each other. His brother was hurt - his brother was scared, and they were meters apart and still couldn't reach – had to stay calm, had to, but this was worse, worse than anything…

Rattling sounds made them turn dizzily towards the hatch, then the door unsealed and air rushed around them, light streamed in. White-suited figures floated in like ghosts and everything was moving too fast for either of them to process. They both focused on breathing, trying to ignore that wrong, _wrong _color in the vapor on his mask.

"Raleigh? Raleigh, look at me." He blinked.

He needed to get loose – "Yancy, stop it, hold still!"

"We may need to take Raleigh and go if he's got it in his lungs - "

"_Are you shitting me?! You break that rig if you have to; you do NOT leave Yancy behind!_" Tanisha was awesome. They needed to tell her that.

"_Pilots stay together after combat, Whiskey Gamma, especially when there's injury_." Caleb was awesome too.

"They're right; we have to get them both. How we doing?"

"Raleigh's stable; we've still got nineteen minutes on his tank. Don't want to pop it if we don't have to."

Something went _CRUNCH, _and he was falling – he gasped – arms caught him – he/they reached –

"Well, that worked."

"Doesn't matter, the whole pod's going to have to be rebuilt – whoa, Yance, Yancy, easy!"

_Raleigh… _"Raleigh - "

_Yance?_ Were they talking out loud? If they were thinking… how were they still hearing?

"Okay, let's move!"

They were pulling him up , and at first all he could think of was reaching his other half, but then he tried to stand and white-hot pain shot through his right leg. Someone yelled, and awareness flickered on and off like channel surfing through reality, too fast to catch anything but a few images and sounds – if channel surfing could include pain.

"Whoa! Get under him - "

" – blood pressure - "

_Hurt – Yance – Rals – where – _Light, wind and cold sweat drying on his face, his breath foggy on the mask of his helmet – _painpainpain _– he blinked – reaching, still reaching – floating, rising away – _nononowhere – _

Contact. Through the shoulder of armor under the hard surface of his glove, but they touched, and plummeted out of the space back to reality and _GOD, _Raleigh's leg hurt.

Yancy was inches from him now, in arm's reach at last, and they'd finally connected again. His eyes were wild, and Raleigh wondered whose heart was pounding so hard. It… was Yancy's. Yancy was scared.

Out of everything he'd seen and done and felt today, that was the worst.

He hated it so much when Yancy was upset.

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming this weekend: _**_There's a big difference between training and the real world, and it's finally dawning on Yancy. The Beckets have bagged their first kill, but the aftermath of the battle with Yamarashi is like nothing they anticipated in _**_Chapter Twenty-Four: First Blood_****_!_**

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.

Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, age 26, African-American from Atlanta, Georgia, brother of Chloe Warner.

Antwan Ferrier: Personnel Coordinator of Whiskey Gamma, a team of Gipsy's strike troopers. Age 39, Jamaican national.


	24. First Blood

_**Author's Note:** Thank you all so much for the feedback on the all-important battle scene! Please keep the reviews coming!_

**Chapter Twenty-Four: First Blood**

_Los Angeles Shatterdome…  
>October 17, 2017…<em>

Yancy had never been so scared in his life.

This wasn't supposed to be happening. They'd had their first combat deployment, their first _kill! _They'd beaten the bastard and saved most of Los Angeles. They'd done their jobs, Yancy and Raleigh Becket and Gipsy Danger, together, just like they'd trained for.

So how could Raleigh be in danger now and not Yancy? How could _only_ Raleigh be hurt?

They always felt "drifty" for a while after the handshake ended, especially when the simulations ran long... but this was more intense than anything they'd done in training. Being airborne in the chopper wasn't helping. Yancy felt disconnected and disoriented and unable to focus on anything except the _need _to hang on to his brother.

Raleigh was strangely calm, which was only adding to their shared confusion. Usually it was the other way; it was always Yancy who kept his cool. They were inside-out and upside-down and backwards.

The white-suited Rescue/Recovery crew moved around them in the chopper's cabin as they rode back to the LA Dome. There were voices all around, but Yancy was struggling to make sense of them.

"Blood oxygen level is good," someone was saying. They were jolting Raleigh around, already getting his battle armor off so they could stick more monitoring equipment on him, and it was all Yancy could do to keep a grip on his shoulder. "Pulse is steady. Hang in there, Spunky, you're doing great."

_"Come on, Spunky, wake up..._" Yancy blinked, something like a post-drift rabbit making him focus in on the dark face under the Hazmat hood. Oh, it was Nicola, the EMT who'd helped them after the Final Spar. She'd joined Gipsy's Rescue/Recovery crew after failing pons training during the spring.

"Yancy?" He turned his head, and there was Antwan. So it was Antwan's group that had come after them. They'd done emergency training with all four of the strike group rescue teams, but for the first time since the alarm had gone off in the conn-pod, Yancy felt reassured. "Let's get your helmet off."

Yancy clumsily obeyed, only struggling when the movement made him take his hand off Raleigh. "Gipsy One's not injured, but showing symptom bleed," someone said. "Gipsy Two is stable; we've started him on the anti-toxins. No respiratory or cardiac distress, but he may have a broken leg."

Landing was a blur of light and sound and motion and then explosions of blinding pain as Raleigh was jolted, and panic when Yancy couldn't feel him. When the world came back into focus, they were in the drive suit room surrounded by swarms of techs and medics. "Raleigh - "

"'m okay," his brother breathed, his voice muffled by the oxygen mask.

"Is this shock?" a tech asked over the buzz of the gear on their armor.

"Drift shock," said someone else. It was Marshall Pentecost, watching from a few feet away as the techs and medics worked. "Post-combat, injury only amplifies it."

Pain streaked through Raleigh again, and Yancy shouted along with him. "His leg is swollen; getting the circuitry suit off is a problem - "

"Just cut it."

"We can't just cut it!"

"Cut it off," Yancy mumbled. Raleigh needed a doctor; screw the suit. They were still trying to get the seals undone, but Raleigh _hurt, _and Yancy wanted it to stop _now. _"Cut it - just CUT IT!"

Someone grabbed his arms. "YANCY!" Antwan was in front of his face. "Look. At. Me." Yancy blinked, seeing Antwan from in front with his own eyes but also from behind with Raleigh's. "Calm down," the big Jamaican ordered. "He's all right. You need to keep it together."

Finally, the circuitry suit was worked free. They both gasped as cold air hit Raleigh's leg, and more movement and jolting and pain followed, but Antwan and Brandon got Yancy dressed and kept him on his feet following the stretcher carrying Raleigh to the infirmary.

And then Raleigh was in a bed, and Yancy was in a chair next to him. He seized his brother's hand, and Raleigh squeezed it hard in answer. "I'm okay," he repeated. "'s okay."

It wasn't okay. Nothing was okay. _What have I done? _Where had he gotten his brother?

"Not your fault, Yance," Raleigh murmured, as if he could hear what Yancy was thinking. Maybe he could.

The medics moved around them; Yancy never noticed them except when they tried to make him let go and pull him away. Then he nearly went berserk, and fortunately for all concerned, someone made them stop. He was on Raleigh's left side, clutching his left hand, so they were mostly able to work on the right, putting the IVs in his right hand and examining the injured right leg.

Some time later, he found Caleb and Tanisha at his elbow. The medics were talking to them, and sometimes they moved away, but they always came back. It was reassuring, knowing they were here. Raleigh smiled at them, sweat beading on his forehead, trying to pretend he wasn't in pain and nauseated and dizzy.

Someone wiped Raleigh's face - it was Carolina. It had gotten far quieter in the infirmary, the movement and voices less frantic. What did that mean? Yancy blinked as one of the medics was talking to them.

" - blood toxicity is minimal. You're not going to... you guys with me?"

"What?" Raleigh asked as they took the mask off and put a line under his nose. That was more comfortable.

"You're going to be fine," the doctor repeated patiently. "You had some fume exposure, but it was very little. We've got you on the full course of anti-toxins, your lung tissues aren't showing any deterioration, and your blood chemistry is good."

"His leg?" Yancy asked.

"It's not broken. The knee is sprained, and there's some tearing of the ACL. Ice and a brace, you'll be in PT for a few months, but you should get full motion back."

"How about some painkillers?" Tendo asked from behind Carolina. "Looks like that hurts."

Now the doctor looked reluctant, and Yancy's heart lurched. "We can't use them in combination with the anti-toxins, so not for twelve hours."

For twelve hours, Raleigh was going to be like this. Yancy's breath started speeding up, and someone had their hands on his shoulder. "Easy, Yance, it's okay. He's okay."

_I'm okay, _whispered an echo in his mind, but Yancy was having trouble believing it.

"Let's get this guy a more comfortable chair," Tanisha said from behind him.

"He ought to go - "

" - Out of the question," Caleb snapped. "He stays with Raleigh."

The rush of gratitude definitely came from both of them as Raleigh's grip tightened on Yancy's hand. "It's all right," Carolina told them. "No one will make you leave." She shot a warning look at whoever was suggesting it. "I _will _go over your heads to the Marshalls if you try."

"If his brother goes into distress, he'll panic!"

Yancy flinched; hadn't they just said he'd be okay?!

"They're drift partners; if Raleigh goes into distress, Yancy will know no matter where he is, and their ears work just fine," said Caleb. "How many Rangers have you treated?"

"That's enough." It was Ramirez. Yancy felt a vague, dull flicker of his usual instinctive snap to attention, but all he did was turn his head. She looked at him, then informed the medics, "Ranger teams stay together post-combat, especially during treatment. Re-read your protocols on drift shock, Doctor."

So they weren't going to take Yancy away. He felt Raleigh relaxing again, as much as he could with his leg throbbing and his stomach roiling.

"Mitchell, did you and Ranger Davis get examined?" Pentecost was there too, but Yancy didn't turn away from Raleigh again. He just couldn't bring himself to care about superiors.

"Yes, sir. Circuitry burns and bruises; Davis strained her shoulder, but nothing major. Just ghost drift," Caleb added wryly. "She's right around the corner."

"I got that, Ranger," said Antwan. "You shouldn't be carrying chairs around if you strained something. Stand up for a minute, Yancy." Yancy jumped, startled when someone tugged his shoulder, but they weren't trying to make him let go of Raleigh, so he let them shift him onto something more cushioned than the hard chair that had been pulled up to Raleigh's bedside before. "There you go."

"Sir, Mitchell and I are fine. Permission to stay with our teammates?" Tanisha asked.

"Granted, but rest if you can. Well done, Rangers. As we knew, there's a death toll, but it's far less than it might have been. You all did extremely well."

_But he's hurt, _Yancy wanted to protest. _He wasn't supposed to get hurt. _

_"_Tani?" They all shut up when Raleigh suddenly spoke up in a raspy voice. He gestured with his head at Yancy. "Tell 'im I'm okay. He won't believe me."

"Aw, _Yance_," said Tendo, but there was no humor in it, just dismay.

Someone was next to him. "Becket. _Yancy_." It was Tanisha. He turned sluggishly to meet her dark eyes, dead-serious like always. She considered him, and he blinked at her, trying to pay attention. "You two did good. This is what it means to be heroes."

It didn't make any sense to him, but it bothered Tendo. "Jesus, Davis!"

"It's the truth," she snapped. "Ain't no point in hiding it!" They liked Tanisha. They could always count on her to tell the truth. So when she turned from Tendo back to Yancy and finished, "He's gonna be fine," Yancy thought maybe, just maybe, he really could believe it.

But it was a long, hard night. Sleep wasn't possible between the pain in Raleigh's leg and the waves of nausea from the anti-toxins; neither was eating. They both went through bouts of vomiting, and only the medics' efforts kept dehydration at bay. The exhausted, drained stupor that followed was the closest either of them came to sleep. Yancy let them get him into clean clothes, but refused to go further than arm's length from his brother's side, and Caleb and Tanisha backed him. Their fellow pilots dozed on and off in the bed on the other side of Raleigh, while a rotating shift of Gipsy's crew took turns sitting with Raleigh and Yancy.

The four pilots had burns traced over their bodies in matching patterns. Compared to all the other injuries, it was just a minor irritation, but the medics dabbed some ointment on the deepest ones. Raleigh studied Yancy's with groggy fascination during the wee hours of the morning, recalling the ones he'd seen on Bruce and Trevin when they'd gone shirtless, and on Dr. Lightcap when she rolled her sleeves up.

_"That doesn't happen in the simulator,_" Bruce had chuckled when somebody asked him about it. "_The input from actual combat on the circuitry is a hell of a lot more powerful, and once you start mixing it up with a kaiju, every time a signal gets disrupted, more shorts, more burns. Everybody gets them. That's how you know you've been initiated."_

Initiated. What a word for this. Yancy fought to keep it together, but Raleigh was on to him. "'s not your fault," he whispered. "'s not."

_It was my idea. I didn't understand. I thought if you were right next to me inside a Jaeger, I could keep you safe._

There was light outside again, and the medics' shift had changed when one of them came over and took more blood, and announced, "Okay, Ranger, you are clear. We can finally get some good drugs into you and let you get some sleep."

Raleigh was too drained to even talk by then, just gave a shaky thumbs-up. Yancy was peripherally aware of them moving around the IVs, then watched his brother's eyes glaze and flutter as a fog of wonderful, cool numbness finally settled over him and softened the edges on his mind. _It's okay, Yance. It's okay now - I'm okay, everything's..._ He was sinking down even before the tranquilizers hit his blood and couldn't have resisted them even if he'd wanted to.

Yancy sank down with him, their grip on each other slackening, but nobody dared to try to take him away as his head dropped onto the bed next to his brother's face. But where Raleigh was finally able to relax into sleep, the fading of his awareness only amplified Yancy's own: that his brother was here, wounded and in pain, and it was his doing. He stroked Raleigh's hair and shook as the last vestiges of self-control started to give way.

"He needs to sleep," someone said.

"He needs to _shower,_" someone else suggested.

Caleb growled at the medics. "We can't take him out of here. He will flip... out. Do you get me?"

"Actually, I don't think he will now that Raleigh's under. Either way, we need to get them both cleaned up; Raleigh's immunity may be shaky," said Nicola.

"...Damn. I didn't think of that. Okay. Pines, gonna need your help. Where's Ferrier? Is he still asleep?"

"I'll page him; he'll come even if he is. You think Antwan can keep him calm long enough?"

"Dunno, but Antwan's the biggest guy on your crew."

"There is that. Yancy?" Someone shook his shoulders, tugging gently until he raised his head. Coffee-brown skin and gold-streaked dark hair... Nicola smiled at him, coaxing. "Let's get you cleaned up, 'kay?"

Her words only made the vaguest sense. He grunted an incoherent protest as she pulled him away from the bed, then struggled as Antwan, Brandon, and Caleb joined her. "Shh, Yance, it's okay," Caleb insisted. "You're coming right back here. Soon as we're done, we promise, okay? We just need to get you showered off so you and Raleigh don't get sick."

What? He looked over his shoulder in confusion. Raleigh already looked sick, unconscious in the bed with the oxygen line under his nose, eyes shadowed, bruised and filthy. "We're just going next door," Antwan urged. "Only a few minutes, okay? Come on, my friend, you're all right."

At first, he was too tired, too confused to process what was going on and just let them lead him along in a daze... until he was in another room full of tiles and steam and _he couldn't see Raleigh anymore!_

Then, he panicked.

He yelled and thrashed and tried to fight his way out, but there were three big figures keeping him back. His body wasn't working right, and neither was his brain. Their shouts for his attention and softer words of reassurance had no meaning in his ears, but he couldn't get free, and finally just buckled and slumped helpless, his breath choked with sobs. _It's my fault it's my fault it's my fault RaleighRaleighRaleigh... _

"Easy, Yance. I know, son. I know. It's okay. Raleigh's gonna be okay."

There was cold water pelting over him, and shivering only made it harder to think. "We've got you, soldier. That's not helping, Pines, turn the warm on before we all get pneumonia."

"Sorry, hold on." It warmed up, and the knots in his muscles started to ease. Yancy blinked and found himself half-clothed and soaked with three guys trying to get the dirt and grease off him. Dully, he scrubbed at his face. "Hey, there he is," said Brandon. "Better?"

_Well, no. _But being clean suddenly appealed. Once they were satisfied that he wasn't going to bolt, they let him go and finish scrubbing off without assistance. Brandon and Caleb in particular didn't seem at all thrown by this weirdness; maybe it was a soldier thing.

_I made my brother a soldier. I got him hurt. _"Raleigh..."

"Listen to me." Antwan was back in front of him, gripping his shoulders hard. "Raleigh is _fine_. The medics have taken good care of him."

"Tani and Tendo and Carolina are with him," added Caleb. "Come on, let's get you dried off, and you can see for yourself."

He was too out of it and too miserable to do anything but let them lead him around, and passively submitted to drying off and getting clean clothes on. He wiped his face at one point and dimly noticed that he was still crying in front of them. But he was too far gone to care.

Raleigh was hurt because of him. There was nothing worse than that.

* * *

><p>Stacker Pentecost heard the commotion from the showers adjacent to the Shatterdome infirmary, and upon entering, quickly worked out what was going on. The crew at Raleigh Becket's bedside were looking towards the noise with wide eyes.<p>

"Stay with him," Stacker ordered. If the injured Ranger was finally asleep, by rights, his partner should have crashed too, but it seemed the older brother was still too agitated.

Things had quieted down by the time he found them. Caleb Mitchell had had the good sense not to try to wrangle a fellow pilot from his partner's side without backup, but the meltdown was well under way. Yancy Becket, Gipsy Danger's solid, self-contained, determined right half, was slumped on the locker room bench, held upright only by his companions, weeping in utter despair.

"Ranger Becket?" Seeing Stacker, Airman Pines jumped to attention, but PC Ferrier went on toweling his charge's hair, and Mitchell just looked anxious.

Glassy, reddened eyes barely focused on him. Stacker stepped forward, and Ranger Mitchell actually moved into his path. "Sir," he said in a low voice. "He's disoriented; he can't help this."

Apparently, Yankee Star's pilot had forgotten that this particular Marshall had also been a Ranger. "And he's still ghost drifting with an injured, sedated partner," Stacker finished. "At ease, Mitchell. I'm not about to punish him."

Mitchell relaxed. "I'm not sure how he's awake at all," he admitted.

Stacker had his theories, but didn't see the need to share them. "There's still a great deal about the drift that isn't understood." Once they got Becket dressed, he ordered, "Come with me."

The young man balked when Stacker led them to an empty office across the hall instead of back to the infirmary. "Raleigh - "

" - Raleigh is resting comfortably. This won't take long. Wait outside," he told the trio. Ferrier shot him a dubious look, but at the nudges from Pines and Mitchell, he obeyed.

Considering how very impaired this Ranger was, Stacker wondered if this was not the time to have this conversation... or, conversely, if this was the only possible time. He pressed ahead. "I think I know what's on your mind."

He was right. "It was my idea," Yancy whispered, too far gone to be self-conscious. Stacker kept his face neutral, even as something deep within him twisted in recognition of an elder brother's anguish. "I brought him here, and it's my fault. Thought I could protect him."

"And now you know that's not the case," Stacker agreed quietly. "Would it ease your mind to know you're not the first pilot to have second thoughts after combat?" No, of course not, but it might be good for Raleigh to know. "Especially within families. You're not the first, and you won't be the last."

"I need to keep him safe."

"You can't." He didn't want to be harsh, but he was blunt. "There is nowhere on this planet that is safe from the kaiju. Until we manage to close the Breach, we can only deal with them as they come, and there's no indication that it will stop. Ever." Yancy flinched.

Stacker fought the urge to sigh. The media and even superior officers had focused almost entirely on Raleigh Becket's youth, but compared to the rest of the pilots, Yancy Becket too fell well into the bottom age bracket. The Psych Analysts probably should have had that flag on his file as well. Surrogate parent to his siblings or not, responsible or not, this Ranger was very young.

It was a boy in front of Stacker's desk at this moment, shaken to his core by realities of the world that he hadn't had a chance to learn in anything resembling a normal setting. Normal had been the very first casualty of K-Day. Now Stacker had to put this Ranger's confidence back together again - and see to it that he and his even-younger sibling went back out to slay more dragons. Doing so meant being mindless of the elder brother within himself who'd shattered four years ago, in the very fate that this boy in front of him feared.

What kind of monster would let another family court that agony?

_One with no other choice. _"Yancy." The boy didn't even blink at such shocking informality. "You and your brother saved thousands of lives yesterday."

That got a vacant smile. "We had help."

"So you did, and you always will. Our ranks are growing, but the need for Rangers remains desperate. No matter how much training is available, finding people with the courage, the skill, and the _trust _to defeat a kaiju will always be difficult. You and Raleigh proved yesterday that you're among the few who can manage it and live. You of all people shouldn't give that up now."

Yancy frowned at the surface of the desk. "After... he wasn't scared."

"I was listening, and I've seen the data from the conn-pod. Yes, he was in danger, but your brother saved _himself_. He kept his head and followed the emergency procedure to the letter, even through a painful injury, and he'll make a full recovery - quite possibly before the next attack."

He shouldn't have added that last point; Yancy shuddered at the thought of another attack. Fighting frustration, Stacker leaned forward. "There are already fingers being pointed towards the engineers over the design of Gipsy's conn-pod. Some feel it was negligent to allow the O2 supply to be vulnerable to contamination."

"Why? They can't predict everything that might happen in a fight."

Stacker had him. "Oh? So you still trust them?" The young man nodded. "Then why not your brother? The drift is about trust, Ranger. Considering what a powerful bond you have, it's surprising that you don't trust your brother more." That reached Yancy, and his chin went up, eyes narrowing. "You've _both_ excelled in the simulations. You've _both_ maintained top standards in training, and yesterday, you both fought down the largest kaiju in recorded history. I hope you won't deny Raleigh his share of the credit."

Dazed, Yancy shook his head. "No. No, I wouldn't do that. I'm proud of him."

_Much better_. "Even if you left the Jaeger Program now and fled to the Himalayas, your brother would not be safe. And millions of people, millions of families would be in far greater danger for your absence." Yancy flinched and shut his eyes. Stacker ruthlessly forced down the voice in his heart that called him cruel for putting this burden on a boy. Two boys. If the brothers' positions were reversed, he had no doubt he'd be having this same conversation with Raleigh. "Nor would your brother thank you for it."

That was the most powerful weapon in Stacker's arsenal, nothing to do with Yancy or even the greater good: what Raleigh himself would choose. Raleigh Becket was correctly labeled the more volatile of the team, but his clarity in the face of the crisis had buried many doubts.

There was a point he could drive further home. "Let me show you something." He turned the computer screen for Yancy to see and accessed the classified records of the Academy. "You know we still don't disclose the range of results from testing recruits. It's not about competition." Yancy nodded.

A list of scores for the various tests appeared. "This was the minimum for Class 2016-B. These are yours. These are your brother's." Two more lines of numbers appeared. "You outscored your brother in most of the tests, it's true. But your brother passed first cut in his own right, according to every standard we set. There is not a single test that he did not pass on his own. Nor has he ever failed to pull his weight in your partnership. You should have faith in that, in his abilities and in his drive. Of course, he's your family, and he's younger. But he's an adult, and he has made his own choice and held to it."

Ranger Yancy Becket was still close to collapse... but it no longer looked as if he was near nervous breakdown. Though exhausted, his face was calmer as he worked through his superior's words and studied at the test scores. Then he smiled again. "He blew me away in the Final Spar, though. I flipped out then, too."

"I remember. The judges paged me." That startled the young man, and Stacker let himself smile. Before he could talk himself out of it, he prodded at brotherly pride a little further. "There have now been four classes totaling more than a thousand recruits who've attempted the first term Final Spar. Raleigh Becket holds the high score record to this day."

Yancy's eyes went wide, but he grinned with unmistakable delight. Pride. "Jaegers don't yield," he murmured.

"No, they don't. And he didn't." _And imagine my glee at discovering that not only did we have a recruit so determined that he forced _us_ to yield, but that that recruit had brought his best friend. _He didn't tell Yancy that part. Seeing that callow teenager willing to challenge them to that degree had been gratifying; turning around to find another Becket in the room had been the clincher. The elder Becket exceeded his brother in every way except raw guts... and that was perfect. _Your classmates weren't the only ones who saw it coming. _

"No one ever said being a Ranger was easy. Yamarashi didn't defeat you yesterday. Don't defeat yourself." He stood, and Yancy nodded, getting to his feet.

They'd be all right. Stacker opened the door and beckoned to the trio waiting outside. "Take him back to the infirmary. Tell the medics he's to stay with his brother until they're both released."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

><p>Tendo was incredibly worried by the time Brandon, Antwan, and Caleb brought Yancy back to the infirmary. "What happened?!"<p>

"Marshall Pentecost pulled him in for a talking-to," said Caleb. To Tendo's surprised relief, Yancy had calmed, and seemed at peace as he looked at Raleigh. Behind him, Brandon gave them all two thumbs up, and Antwan was nodding vigorously. _Hmm_. So whatever Pentecost had said, apparently it'd gotten Yance off the ledge.

Borne out by Caleb's report that Pentecost too had ordered Yancy be allowed to stay with Raleigh, the medics didn't make any more noise about sending him away. They did demand that he rest. "He's not doing himself or his brother any favors by being exhausted to this degree. If he doesn't sleep soon, we'll trank him."

"Fine." Tanisha stood briskly and ordered Tendo, "Give me a hand," and began pulling the nearest bed up against Raleigh's.

"There we are." Carolina lowered the small railings so both brothers could reach each other. With that detail attended to, Yancy let them coax him into lying down. Nobody missed that the moment his brother was next to him again, Raleigh shifted in that direction.

Yance draped an arm over his brother and finally relaxed as Carolina stroked his hair. He was dead to the world in minutes. Tendo folded his arms, giving Tanisha a pointed look. "I think _that's _what it means to be heroes," he said.

"I never said there wasn't a plus side too. It comes with both."

"And you didn't think they had it in them," Antwan said smugly.

She stared him down. "I never said that either, just that training's not proof. You can't know until you been there."

"And now they been there."

She looked at the sleeping brothers and nodded, conceding quietly. "Yeah. And then some."

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon: **__Raleigh and Yancy are both on the road to recovery, and all of our heroes of Team Gipsy and Team Yankee experience the triumph and toil that comes after a kaiju kill in __**Chapter Twenty-Five: Learn By Experience**__**! **_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Antwan Ferrier: Personnel Coordinator of a team of Gipsy's strike troopers and rescue/recovery crew. Age 39, Jamaican national.

Brandon Pines: Pilot of Whiskey Gamma, one of Gipsy's main support helicopters. Early 30s from Monterey, CA, formerly US Air Force.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative (and unofficial den mother). Mid-60s, Mexican-American from San Francisco, survived K-Day and came out of retirement to join the PPDC.

Nicola Harris: Rescue/recovery EMT with Whiskey Gamma, one of Gipsy's strike troop teams. Age 20, African-American/Latina from San Diego, came to Raleigh and Yancy's aid when Raleigh passed out after his Final Spar in their first term at the Jaeger Academy (see Chapter 2.)

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.


	25. Learn By Experience

_**Author's Notes:**__ Since I forgot to post a preview on my Tumblr, here's your chapter a little early! Just a reminder that previews, an original character master list, and some fanon/headcanon blogs on the Pacific Rim/Generation K fanverse are all up there at 3Fluffies dot Tumblr dot com. (Check the "Generation K" tag. There's also a link on my author profile page.)_

_**Canon Note:**__ Keunsango is an original kaiju character, and that attack (November 2015, the third after Brawler Yukon's first deployment) is also headcanon - but for those who have read Travis Beacham's blog about the pilots of Korea's Nova Hyperion, this was that attack. If there is interest, perhaps I can be persuaded to write a short story/blog fic or two about those early battles and the fledgling Jaeger Program's discovery of "drift shock."_

**Chapter Twenty-Five: Learn By Experience**

_Los Angeles Shatterdome…  
>October 18, 2017…<em>

Part of the training for Team Gipsy had included post-engagement recovery. Yamarashi marked the ninth Jaeger-versus-kaiju event, and each one got analyzed to death not only by the tacticians and the K-Scientists, but by the psychs. Tendo and the rest of the support teams had dutifully read the material and recognized its purpose: "The Care And Feeding Of Rangers," as Penny Jefferson snarkily put it.

But in practice, after Yamarashi… they finally _got _it.

Carolina earned her pay and then some managing the questions and demands for information on how the fight had gone, the condition of the Beckets, and the repairs to Gipsy Danger. Somehow amid fielding all those calls and e-messages, she was also frequently in the infirmary with Raleigh and Yancy. Tendo was happy to do whatever jobs she gave him, whether it was fielding calls from within the Corps or checking in with Team Yankee.

"There is something I've been wondering," he remarked to Penny as the two crews got to work on the Post-Engagement Investigation. "Tanisha and Caleb. They'd never done combat drift before, but last night… they knew exactly what was going on with Raleigh and Yancy." Yankee's Support Chief frowned at him, and he explained quickly, "I mean, drift-wise. I didn't, uh, didn't think it was just from combat."

The ex-Marines were sometimes touchy about their history, especially when it came to whatever trauma they'd carried from their human battlefields. Tendo hoped he'd phrased it tactfully, but he still half-expected Penny to inform him that it was none of his business.

To his surprise, after a long silence, she told him: "Keunsango."

He stared. "Say what?!"

Keunsango had been… late 2015, Romeo Blue's first combat and kill after Brawler Yukon was disabled. That had been a scary few days for the whole world, now that he recalled, pulling up the PPDC reports he'd studied. Brawler Yukon had been attempting his third kill, backed up by the not-even-officially-launched Coyote Tango, but then the kaiju had nearly destroyed him and damaged Coyote before diving into the Sea of Japan and heading for South Korea. Romeo had taken the bastard out nearly thirty-six hours later.

"What'd Keunsango have to do with Team Yankee?"

Dumb question, from the way Penny rolled her eyes. "There was no Team Yankee back then. The brass was still debating who should get the Mark-2, so we were all Romeo's support crew." With a thin smile, she explained, "Jaeger Strike Troop teams were still in the works, so it was just Marine, Coast Guard, and National Guard R&R companies doing the post-combat cleanup and getting the Rangers out of the Jaeger."

"Oh." Tendo tried to recall what he'd read about the condition of the Gage twins after that first fight. There'd been nothing said to the public at least, but the twins hadn't joined the public celebrations right away. One or both of them might have been hurt.

He looked down at the crew manual. _Drift shock: extreme post-combat disorientation and distress. Pilots should not be physically separated unless absolutely essential to lifesaving treatment._ Bruce and Trevin Gage were Army Rangers, no strangers to combat stress and injury even before K-Day. But if the shock after fighting a Jaeger had been half as bad for them as for Rals and Yance… yeah, their support crew would definitely have learned how to deal with it. Marshall Pentecost too had known exactly what was happening to Yancy when Raleigh was hurt, _and _he'd known how to calm him down afterwards.

"So it's not just something that happens to first timers?" he mused.

Penny shook her head. "Medical assumed it was just Lightcap, the first couple of times, civilian with no combat experience freaking out and it bleeding over into D'onofrio. After Keunsango, they realized different. It happens to all of 'em, especially if someone gets hurt."

"Your guys looked pretty cool last night," he pointed out admiringly.

But Penny gave him a wry smile. "You don't know 'em like I do. They weren't hurt, not like your boys, but… it changed 'em. Believe me."

Tendo did.

* * *

><p>Though Tanisha and Caleb had come through with few injuries, they spent the first forty-eight hours in the infirmary with their fellow Rangers… in a rather similar sleeping arrangement. Late in the evening after Yancy had fallen asleep, Tendo returned to a scene so goddamned cute that he would've made a fortune selling pictures of it.<p>

Two pairs of beds were pulled up against each other so the occupants had unimpeded access to their partners. Raleigh was nestled up against his brother's side, half-buried in blankets with Yancy's arm still over him and Yancy's cheek against his hair. Both were calm, at last. In the other pair of beds, Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell were honest-to-god spooning, with Caleb wrapped around his partner and his chin tucked over her shoulder.

Tendo nearly melted into a puddle on the spot, but when he pulled out his phone, Tanisha muttered (seemingly without opening her eyes), "You point that thing at us, Choi, and I'll break your jaw."

Figured. Carolina came in a moment later and booted him out. "Go call their classmates, especially the Hassans and the Hydra girls. They'll be desperate for news."

Since it was semi-official business, he commandeered the rec room interface (not that the few crew off duty complained), and found over a hundred messages, texts, and missed calls. _Note to self: Establish a phone/text tree for people who are actually Raleigh and Yancy's friends,_ he thought.

It was pre-dawn in Brisbane, but Tendo caught the Hassans still awake. "Thank GOD!" Suze exploded, appearing to have pounced on the webcam. "We were about to swim across that bloody ocean and kill you all! Now what the hell is going on?!"

"They're fine, guys," Tendo said urgently. "Raleigh and Yancy are fine."

Devi looked suspicious. All accounts had her fling with Yancy being just casual, but that didn't mean she wasn't worried. "The reports said Raleigh inhaled Kaiju Blue."

"He got some fumes in his O2, but he's almost done with detox. I've been in and out of sickbay all day; he's having no trouble breathing. They had a rough first night because he sprained his knee in the rig and couldn't get painkillers, but he's on the good stuff now."

The sisters let out their breath in chorus, a lot like Raleigh and Yancy probably would. A pop-up on the screen announced another incoming call. "Oh, hang on, that's Steffie and Kennedy." He patched their classmates in. "Hey, guys!"

"Why doesn't anybody in LA answer the fucking vidcomm?!" Kennedy roared.

"Well, dunno if you heard, but we had a big, green uninvited guest here in town," Brandon Pines called from behind Tendo. "We've been a little busy."

"Too busy to text Raleigh and Yancy's friends and just tell us they're all right," Devi Hassan huffed.

Tendo raised placating hands. "I promise, we'll do it better next time. I'll put a listserve together. Cut us some slack for the first round, 'kay?"

The grumbles were a little more playful now. "Dr. Lightcap says Raleigh's going to be okay?" Steffie asked anxiously.

"He is. Physical therapy for a few weeks for that knee, and all those nasty anti-toxins for the Kaiju Blue keep making him puke, but the medics say he'll be back on his feet before Gipsy, at this rate."

Kennedy bared her teeth. "I'm gonna yell at Yancy for letting him get hurt."

Brandon dropped his tablet with a hiss, and Tendo lost all humor. The younger girls blinked, while Devi and Suze both stiffened. "What? Tendo, what?!"

He sensed Brandon and several of the others now coming to flank him in front of the webcam. "If you say _anything _like that to Yance, I will have your head," Tendo informed all four of them.

Devi, the elder sibling, was the one who worked it out. "Oh, God. How bad?"

"Bad," said Brandon. "I think he's okay now, but last night? Shit. He was in complete meltdown. Raleigh was calmer than he was."

"He seems to be better now," said one of the other guys hopefully. "Raleigh's still pumped full of drugs, but one of the Marshalls had a talk with Yance, and he doesn't look ready to off himself anymore. Mitchell and Davis have been sticking really close to them in sickbay."

"Team Yankee's okay?"

Tendo nodded. "Raleigh was the only one who took any major knocks." He smiled, his own tension easing. "Here's a tip for you up-and-coming jockeys: you know that stuff about post-drift grounding through physical contact?" The women nodded. "After combat? Quadruple it. There is serious snuggling going on in the infirmary."

"Aww, you should send a picture around!"

"Sorry, I tried to take one, but Tanisha caught me. I value my manhood too much to try that again."

"Good on Ranger Davis," said Suze, grinning wickedly. "I'm glad she keeps your boys' club on their toes."

"Seriously, Tendo, as soon as they're feeling up to it, _call _us," Steffie urged. "No matter what time it is. And tell them we're thinking 'bout them."

"Will do, my girls. Promise." Tendo crossed his heart for good measure. "_And _if there's any change, I'll get a mass email around. Bear with us, okay? Everyone's in one piece, it's just been a little chaotic around here. We'll smooth it out next time around."

"You tell them they were fantastic," Devi ordered. "All four of them. We've been watching that fight over and over. All the asses who complained about Yankee and Gipsy being untested? They can stick this in their pipe and smoke it."

"Amen," Brandon agreed, slapping Tendo on the shoulder. They ended the Skype call with lighter hearts.

* * *

><p>Raleigh woke to a foggy, off-kilter world… but still feeling incredibly safe. It didn't take him long to work out why: Yancy was right here, so close that Raleigh could hear his heart beating, one arm draped around him. They hadn't cuddled like that since Raleigh was seven, and they'd shared a sleeping bag while camping. Well, there'd been one time during a trip when they were eleven and thirteen, and the house they'd been renting in Sweden had lost its heating, but that had been awkward, just desperation to stay warm overnight.<p>

This was strangely wonderful. He drowsily recalled the things Psych had told them about combat drift recovery. He and Yancy had noticed the tendency to hug tightly or sit close together after sims, but hadn't expected actual combat to be that different. Apparently, it was.

Over Yancy's shoulder, a few feet away, he noticed Tanisha in the next bed with a tablet… and Caleb in the same bed, dozing with his arms around her. So, obviously it wasn't just Raleigh and Yance. Caleb stirred and saw Raleigh looking at them. "Hey, kiddo. How you feeling?"

"Kinda…woozy," Raleigh admitted.

Yancy sighed and began shifting like he was waking up. Tanisha put her tablet down and said softly, "You be nice to your brother, Becket. You scared him."

"I didn't mean to." Raleigh's memories of their arrival in the infirmary were pretty fragmented, but he remembered _feeling _Yancy's fear and anguish more intensely than the pain in his leg. It had been horrible. So he shifted himself as much as he could with one leg in a brace to get even closer, so Yance would know he was here. It didn't really hurt - whatever meds he'd been given had it pretty well numbed - but his lower body was clumsy. "It's okay, Yance," he murmured. "Everything's okay."

"Raleigh?" His brother's arms tightened convulsively around him. Raleigh saw Tanisha and Caleb getting up, waving a quiet farewell and shooing the medics out of earshot. "Rals?"

"Hey, I'm here. I'm okay." He wasn't sure how long it'd been since they'd engaged Yamarashi. But wow, had Yancy been hurt after all, or had the medics just decided to drug him too? He looked like hell, as groggy and exhausted as Raleigh felt. It took a few minutes for him to focus as Raleigh rubbed his arms and shoulders. Then he stared, looking his brother up and down as if he wasn't convinced by Raleigh's reassurances. "Are _you_ okay?" Raleigh asked.

Yancy shut his eyes and tugged Raleigh against him. "I am now," he sighed. There was an edge in his voice that Raleigh hadn't heard before, and it made him feel awful. "Kiddo... don't you _ever _scare me like that again."

"Sorry," Raleigh whispered. "I didn't mean to." But Yancy looked at him, and seemed to really _see _him now... and he smiled. The knot of anxiety inside Raleigh loosened, and Yance brushed his fingertips over the stubble on his face. "We did it. We got the fucker."

"We bagged a kill. First kill," Yancy agreed. "You..." he faltered, blinking in confusion.

"What?"

"Dunno, I... I've been kind of out of it." Yance scrubbed at his face as if trying to rub his memories back in. "Someone told me. You did everything right. You saved yourself." Now there was no missing the pride in his voice, and Raleigh felt warm all over. The kiss Yancy pressed on top of his head didn't even make him self-conscious. "I'm so proud of you, Rals. More than I've ever been, and that's really saying something."

Raleigh grinned. "Had a good partner," he whispered around his tightened throat.

"Me too."

There were people coming towards them, looking reluctant to interrupt, but Yancy sat up, keeping a hand on Raleigh's shoulder. "How's the leg feeling?"

"I'm not really feeling it at all at the moment." Raleigh had to disentangle his IV lines and oxygen before he could sit up with Yancy's help. "It... you said it's not broken, right?" He was pretty sure that was just a brace, not a cast.

The approaching medic nodded. "Torn ACL was the worst part. We'll have to keep it immobilized for a week or so, but physical therapy and rest will take care of it. Any trouble breathing?"

Raleigh shook his head, and obediently huffed and puffed into their various instruments, and inhaled some nasty vapor that made him cough and gag. "That's disgusting!"

"Sorry, Ranger. You're very lucky, you know," the doctor went on as he rinsed his mouth. "Not a lot of people can keep their heads around Blue vapor even when they have portable oxygen available. You didn't get it into the deep lung tissue, and that's why you're only at risk for a little bronchitis."

"Is it always fatal if it goes that deep?" Yancy asked quietly.

"Not always, but Kaiju Respiratory Syndrome is not something to mess around with." The doctor gave Yancy a knowing look. "And he does _not _have that. KRS means the vapor is in alveoli tissue and interfering with the gas exchange - operating like rapid-onset pneumonia from influenza."

_Ick. _They'd all seen and read the descriptions of KRS in training; victims drowned on dry land like deaths from swine flu or tuberculosis in the movies. It was the first thing anyone in the Jaeger Program thought of when they saw blue vapor. Raleigh let himself lean against Yancy again. "Are Tanisha and Caleb okay?"

"Yep. Bruises, a few wrenched muscles, but you were the only major injury." The doctor smirked at them. "And Southern California is eagerly awaiting your recovery so it can throw itself at your feet. So much for Yankee Star and Gipsy Danger being rookies!"

* * *

><p>It was all downhill from there. It was another day before Raleigh was released from the infirmary, but the medics didn't give Yancy a hard time about staying with him. His leg hurt like hell once the painkillers got cut back, and the brace was really annoying, especially when he was trying to sleep. Raleigh liked to curl up, and keeping that leg extended made it impossible.<p>

Forty-eight hours after Yamarashi was declared dead, Tendo brought them a tablet and set them up on a video call to Anchorage. "HEYYY GIPSYYYY!" roared the Gages, Steffie and Kennedy, and the D'onofrios.

Raleigh and Yance, piled into their improvised double-bed with Tanisha and Caleb, could barely stop laughing enough to talk. Leave it to Bruce and Trevin to be the blunt ones. "Man, Baby Becket, you look like shit!"

"What'd you do to yourself?!" demanded Steffie.

Raleigh affected innocence. "I got into a fight."

That sent everyone into whoops of laughter, and Caleb added for good measure, "This is nothing. You oughtta see the other guy!"

"We rearranged his ugly face," Tanisha agreed.

"And ripped his head off," added Yancy.

"Man, remind me not to get on Gipsy and Yankee's bad side," said Kennedy, shaking her head. "You LA Rangers are hard core! Although... Rals, seriously, the unshaven scruffy thing really doesn't work on you."

"Geez, I kill my first kaiju and all I get is critique about my grooming," Raleigh huffed. He got his cheeks pinched from two different directions. "Hey! Hey! Invalid here! You're not allowed to pick on me!"

"He's milking that for all it's worth, isn't he?" chuckled Lightcap.

"Believe it, Doc."

"It's Caitlin, Yancy. And Sergio. If we'd had our way, it would've been long before now. We've been getting swamped with gifts for you four up here too, especially from the locals. The hometown crowd is beside themselves."

The Gages were nodding. "So what's your poison? Jon Stewart or Oprah?"

"How 'bout Ellen DeGeneres?" suggested Tanisha.

"Talk to Brady and Carolina. I bet she'd jump on it. Craig Ferguson is our personal favorite. He's fun, and doesn't pick you apart," said Bruce. He eyed the four of them. "Yancy, wash your face first. Raleigh, shave. Tani, comb your hair. Caleb, brush your teeth."

"Yes, Daddy," Caleb and Tanisha chorused.

"I'm serious! You four are famous now! Gotta look the part!"

"Does this mean the cheap shots will stop now?" Yancy asked dryly.

He was being rhetorical, and everyone knew it since all ten of them joined in the answer: "No."

* * *

><p>There were still assholes in the world making bitchy comments about affirmative action towards Yankee Star and referring Gipsy Danger's pilots as dumb jocks, even after Yamarashi. However, the crews of both Jaegers found themselves far less often moved to anger, since the assholes and armchair quarterbacks quickly ended up as the targets of backlash from a much-larger adoring public.<p>

The only really big disappointment after their victory was that Raleigh and Yancy weren't permitted to go to Australia for the launch of Vulcan Specter two weeks later. Raleigh did come down with the predicted bout of bronchitis, and the medics flatly refused to consider letting him fly anywhere, let alone across the Pacific. "You'd also be really uncomfortable making that trip on that leg," LA's chief medical officer pointed out.

The Hassans were completely understanding, and talked the Beckets down beforehand. "_We _weren't active duty when you two launched," Devi insisted. "Let alone two weeks out of combat and injury."

Raleigh was still down about it. "Kennedy and Steph are going. We thought it should be a tradition."

"Kaiju have a way of derailing traditions," Suze replied. "Cheer up, you two. We know you'll be watching, and that's all we'd ever ask. Who knows where the four of us will be stationed when Kennedy and Steffie launch next year. They wouldn't hold a grudge if we can't make it then either. We're all Rangers now."

The first post-Yamarashi interview took place three days before Vulcan's launch, and Tani and Caleb were very on-board with plugging that event.

Tani got her chosen interviewer, and the staff had apparently kept it quiet that one of the heroes of the hour was injured, because Ellen got all worked up when Raleigh came out on crutches. "What - what happened here?!"

Raleigh threw out his "I got into a fight" line, which brought the house down and spawned a whole series of "you oughtta see the other guy" memes around the Internet.

On Vulcan Specter's Launch Day (appropriately, Halloween), the four of them were out on the Shatterdome grounds with Yankee and Gipsy, facing southwest towards Australia. The media presence at LA was huge, and enormous throngs gathered outside the fence, many bearing signs that simply read "_THANK YOU_."

"_LONG BEACH LOVES YANKEE AND GIPSY!"_

"_KAIJU: STAY AWAY FROM LA!_"

They caused a buzz when a daring reporter asked them about the "concerns" people had over the newest pilots being "from a Muslim country." All four of them visibly bristled.

"That's a complete crock," Raleigh snapped, and only just managed to keep from swearing. "Devi and Susanti Hassan were the same class at the Academy as Yancy and me, passed the same tests we did in the same training. If we could, we'd be in Australia with them. They came back to Anchorage when we launched."

"And dunno if you've done your homework, but the country they're 'from' is Australia," added Caleb. "They were both born there!"

"What, you want to see their birth certificates?" Yancy added.

Carolina and Brady ushered the reporters back to the press lines before violence could erupt, but the foursome were muttering and growling amongst themselves for several minutes.

There were a few other close calls with the media, like when some reporter repeated the complaint that Yankee Star hadn't pulled her weight in the fight. Raleigh almost went nuclear, but Yancy, though visibly fuming, put the asshole in his place without even raising his voice.

"You think so? Okay, let me show you something. Stand here." He steered the blowhard to stand next to a news van. "That's your kaiju." He tapped a letter on the van's decal. "These are its eyes. You're us - Gipsy Danger."

Deftly doing the calculation in his head, he walked fifty meters away and called, "This was Yankee Star. You want to tell me how easy you think it'd be for me to shoot that kaiju's eyes out without taking your head off too?"

"Yankee Star did what she was built to do, and her pilots did what they were trained to do. They're marksmen," said Marshall Ramirez, as Carolina and Brady once again corralled the agitated pilots. "Every kaiju is different, and because of that, so is every Jaeger. We've formed our teams with the intention of putting different strengths together because we still can't predict what will come out of the Breach. Gipsy Danger's pilots did what they were trained to do with a Jaeger that was built for close combat. This was a team effort and a team kill."

"And if that asshole from Fox talks shit about you two again, I'm shoving my crutch up his ass," Raleigh growled.

"Shh! Rals!"

* * *

><p><em>Anchorage Shatterdome...<br>November 2017..._

Romeo Blue was transferred down to LA for the winter while Gipsy and Yankee went back to Anchorage for repairs and refitting, much to the glee of the Gages and the dismay of Caleb and Tanisha. "So this is what it's like to be heroes," Penny Jefferson grumped as they all packed. "All-expenses paid trip to Igloo-land for another winter."

Raleigh was cleared to start physical therapy, but both he and Yancy were bored and frustrated with being unable to do simulations for weeks. The engineering crews did have them in Gipsy's conn-pod fairly often, going over and over the progress of the fight and figuring out how to reconfigure her systems so the Kaiju Blue wouldn't endanger them again.

"The air supply needs to be completely rerouted," Dr. Schoenfeld insisted. "And the portables should be in arms-reach of the rig even if the rig is locked."

"Agreed," said Priya Katwal, fiddling with a massive hologram of the pod schematic. "Raleigh had to deactivate the handshake before going for the tank. That took twenty-three seconds. Jumping to his tank and activating it took another twelve. If he'd been in worse distress or at all disoriented, he might not have made it."

Yancy didn't talk much during the crisis analysis conversations, and Raleigh wasn't the only one who sensed why. He found himself putting an arm around his brother after (and sometimes during) the meetings. Carolina and some of the others from Team Gipsy who didn't actually need to be there still came, and he was grateful for that.

"Every engagement teaches us something new," Carolina told Yancy. "The system wasn't perfect, but you both still got through, and now it will be better."

"And Raleigh's now the Academy's poster boy for how to handle a conn-pod crisis," added Tendo. "The trainees are all being taught to react just as he did. He did exactly what he was supposed to do."

"I know." Yance mustered a smile and ruffled Raleigh's hair. "I know."

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming Soon: _**_The Beckets face an unpleasant ghost from the past during their recovery from Yamarashi, but a new year begins with __another triumph for the Jaeger Program in __**Chapter Twenty-Six: New Heights**__**!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.

Penelope "Penny" Jefferson: Yankee Star's LOCCENT Support Chief, former Chief Warrant Officer with the US Marines. Mid-30s, African-American from Los Angeles.

Brady Harris: Yankee Star's Public Relations Representative. Late 30s, African-American from San Diego.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative. Mid-60s, Mexican-American from San Francisco, survived K-Day and came out of retirement to join the PPDC.

Brandon Pines: Gipsy Danger support chopper pilot, early 30s from Monterey, CA, transferred from the US Air Force.

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Pilots of Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark-3. Indonesian-Australians, ages 26 and 24, graduated the same class as the Beckets.


	26. New Heights

_**Author's Note:** The first scene in this chapter comes from the novel and extended canons, which state that both of the Beckets' parents died during the Kaiju War. The "growth spurt" scene comes from my own research, where I noticed that Charlie Hunnam is an inch taller than Diego Klattenhoff. I couldn't NOT take that and run with it!_

**Chapter Twenty-Six: New Heights**

_Anchorage Shatterdome…  
>December 2017…<em>

After Yamarashi, there were a few changes in the Jaeger Program that came as a surprise. Tacit Ronin's pilots were retired while she was still in refit from the Osaka engagement, and Duc Jessop came to the Academy to teach. Kaori Jessop was there briefly during the winter, working with some of the teams refitting the Mark-2's, but she headed off to Hawaii, reportedly to work with K-Watch. Nobody really seemed to have an explanation.

Raleigh got more restless as his leg healed, anxious to be back in Gipsy or at least in the simulator. It was weeks before he could even exercise properly, let alone spar. The medics (and Yancy) were constantly scolding on him for putting too much pressure on his knee, and sometimes he was sure that people were hanging around distracting him on direct baby-sitting detail. Being laid up was torturously boring.

A few weeks after they returned to Anchorage, Raleigh and Yancy were finishing up Raleigh's daily physical therapy/torture session when Carolina came into the gym. With all the public attention in the wake of Yamarashi, they had meetings with her almost every day to go over the most interesting press commentary and pick out what mailings they wanted to answer personally - and deal with any unpleasantness.

"Boys?" The tone of her voice, and the fact that she'd sought them out before they were even showered was a warning that this was unpleasantness. And urgent, to boot.

Raleigh exchanged a quick grimace with his brother, and limp-shuffled to the nearest bench. Carolina was downright hesitant in the doorway - and he doubted it was because he and Yancy were still sweaty and gross. Well, neither of them were going to shoot the messenger however bad the news was.

Yancy beckoned her in. "_Qué pasa, Abuela_?" That got a faint smile, and she came in and closed the door behind her.

After only a moment's longer hesitation, she came out with it. "Since the public launch, we've been keeping an eye out for any news of your family." Raleigh couldn't help the way he stiffened, and he saw Yancy go rigid in the corner of his eye.

Carolina knew the basic details of their relationship - or lack thereof - with Dad and Jazmine. She'd gently, sensitively worked the story out of them during the first few weeks of her tenure as their liaison. She'd warned them, "You should know, it's not unusual for formerly-estranged relatives to change their mind when fame and fortune come into the picture."

"Crawl out of the woodwork, you mean," Yancy had muttered. They had doubted that Jazmine would, but Dad... neither of them could write off that possibility. And they'd never really managed to come up with a definite decision on how they'd handle it if he did.

So now, Raleigh assumed that was what had happened. From the way Yancy was scowling, bracing himself, he was probably thinking the same. After their launch and successful kill, Dad or some as-yet-unknown distant relation was looking to cash in. "After Yamarashi?" Raleigh asked.

"Before," Carolina said. That was confusing; Raleigh and Yancy both frowned. "Before your launch, actually. We didn't catch it right away because it wasn't publicized. But engineering firms have to report... accidents, and someone finally noticed the name. It happened overseas."

Something cold and heavy settled over Raleigh's insides. Yancy deflated from his aggressive stance, his expression going blank. He was the one who voiced it. "He's dead?"

Carolina nodded. "When?" Raleigh murmured.

"June, just a few days after Hammerjaw. In Taiwan. There was an explosion at a power plant where he was working. The names of the fatalities weren't released until the investigation ended last week."

_Dad...dead. _Gone even before, but now... never coming back. Raleigh had wondered, in the back of his mind, at launch and then again after Yamarashi... would he change his mind now? Decide he wanted to be their father again? And what would they be able to do about it? He'd known what Yancy would say... and in his heart, Raleigh hadn't exactly disagreed. _We weren't good enough to be your family before, don't think you can ride our coattails now,_ he'd imagined himself saying.

But now it was all moot. Dad was dead. He'd died before launch, in Taiwan. Word hadn't even reached them until almost six months after the fact. "Do we need to do anything?" Yancy asked slowly. "Claim... anything?"

"If you want to. He had no emergency contacts listed, so his employers didn't realize... he was buried there. But if you want, we can arrange..."

They could arrange to bring his body back. Bury him next to Mom. Have a proper funeral. The cold feeling was still there, but it was turning... harder. Raleigh looked at Yancy and shook his head. Yancy got the message. "Has anyone notified our sister?"

Carolina nodded, but didn't go into what Jazmine's response had been, which was all they really needed to figure it out. So Jazmine wasn't interested in laying Richard Becket to rest either.

_"Dad, you don't have to go." _He'd gone. The day after Mom's funeral, he'd gone, leaving Yancy and Raleigh to clean up the wreckage of their family and choose between guardianship of Jazmine and the Jaeger Program. That was a choice that should never have fallen on them.

"Do you want me to give you some time?"

Yancy nodded. "We'll let you know. Thanks, Carolina." She kissed him on the cheek and patted Raleigh's head, then let herself out. Yancy came to sit down next to him. "Do you want to do anything?"

It only took a few moments for him to make up his mind. He shook his head. "No. It's just... it's too late. It was too late even then."

"Yeah." His brother snorted, shaking his head. "Funny. All this time I was worried he'd come swanning back, looking to play big happy family."

Raleigh nodded. He'd seen those visions in the drift enough, and felt the wash of Yancy's distaste, his contempt, but also his anxiety, fear that no one would understand why Richard Becket's sons might not want anything to do with him. There were memories of Yancy's arguments with Dad when they'd been younger, before Yancy had given up altogether on trying to convince Dad that his wife and kids needed him to be there for them once in a while.

_"Do I not put food on this table?!" _had been Dad's mantra, and the sum-total of his defense. Sure, he'd worked and made sure they were all fed and sheltered. Beyond that... even when he'd been home, he hadn't been _there_, once Jazmine was too big to fit into his lap. He'd tinkered with his trucks and gone out to bars with his buddies, and spent all his time at home glued to the television.

Mom was the one person he'd actually acted like he loved, like he was happy to see her when he came home. Sometimes he'd brought her flowers, always remembered her birthday and their anniversary. Raleigh had assumed that was love, and the only proof anybody would ever need.

Even before Mom had gotten sick, Yancy had thought differently. _He just goes through the motions because he thinks that's his job, _Raleigh had seen/heard in the drift memories. _We never meant any more to him than any of his projects. _

Would it have been different if he'd lived to see Gipsy Danger launch, to see Raleigh and Yancy catapulted into fame, to see them triumph over a kaiju, saviors of Los Angeles?

Would either Raleigh or Yancy have wanted it to be different?

In the end, he couldn't come up with a clear answer, so they mutually decided to deal with it the same way they dealt with everything else concerning Dad and Jazmine. Just... forgetting about it. Moving on. Distracting themselves with PT and tactics planning and K-Science until they didn't need to anymore.

* * *

><p>Finally, between Christmas and New Year's, Raleigh and Yancy were cleared to resume simulations and exercises in Gipsy, whose shiny, newly-refurbished conn-pod was just about complete. "Best present ever!" Raleigh cheered, bouncing into the Assembly Building drivesuit room without so much as a twinge from his knee.<p>

But then they got a surprise: "Did this thing shrink or something?" muttered Christian as they were getting Raleigh into his circuitry layer.

"We've had the drivesuit out for testing with the new rig, but it's the same one they wore in October," said Priya in confusion.

"Maybe he gained some weight while he was laid up," proposed someone.

"You got fat!" Yancy crowed. Raleigh flipped him off as the suit crew laughed.

"Too much Christmas dinner," suggested Priya. "It was better than last year's." She peered over the suit techs' shoulders as they wrestled with the circuitry suit fastenings, then straightened her wire-rim glasses and frowned at Raleigh. "Have you gotten _taller?_"

Everyone blinked. "Nineteen's a little late to be having a growth spurt, isn't it?" said Cady Spencer, poking his head in the door.

Now people were trickling in curiously from other parts of the building, sizing the Beckets up. Tendo looked from one to the other, then said slowly, "You know... I think you might be taller than Yance now."

"What?!" Yancy Becket was outraged. He sputtered incoherently as everyone started trying to make comparisons, and then began snarling denials. "No chance! NO CHANCE! What'd you do, you little shit?! Put lifts in your shoes?"

Raleigh was interfering with the measurement attempts by doubling over with laughter, and Carolina came marching in with a tape measure. "All right, let's settle this once and for all!"

"Feet on the floor, Becket boys! Outta those boots!" Christian ordered. "Raleigh's suit definitely doesn't fit right anymore, so we might as well."

"Okay, Becket the Elder, up against the wall. Look straight ahead." Cady had to press down on Yancy's shoulders as he growled dire threats at his sibling.

"Six feet even, same as on his personnel file," Tendo pronounced, and someone marked it off on the wall for good measure with a little _Y.B._ "No surprises here. Right. Okay, Yance, scoot."

"He is NOT taller than me. He is NOT."

"Last spring when we fitted him, he was a half-inch shy of Big Bro," Christian reported. "Not that big a jump to catch up."

"He. Did. Not. Get. Taller."

"Nineteen's a little old to still be growing, but it ain't unheard of. C'mon, 2.0, assume the position!"

Raleigh was flat-out giggling as he stood against the wall, and the guys marked off the top of his head...

"Eh? Eh? Eh - OOHHHHHH! Look at this, somebody's had a growth spurt!"

Raleigh let them pull him away and turned around to see Tendo gleefully putting his initials on a new notch - above the first one. "WOOOOOO! TOP OF THE WORLD!"

Like a wrestling announcer, Priya bellowed, "And measuring in at a whopping six-foot-one, Raleigh Becket is now officially the tallest!" The room erupted into whoops and hoots and laughter.

"NNNNOOOOOO!" Yancy threw himself to his knees with a howl that would give Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski a run for the money. "How could you do this to me?!"

"HAHA! Where's my phone?! I'm texting everybody! EVERYBODY! I'm tweeting it! I'm taller than my big brother!"

"BETRAYYYYED!"

"I'll write the press release!" snorted Carolina.

"Let's measure the rest of him, see if anything else has grown!" Tendo laughed.

"Just his ego. Rals, stop dancing and let us take that suit off!" one of the suit techs exclaimed, chasing Raleigh around the room.

"Aww, poor Yance." Christian flopped down next to the prostrate, wailing elder Becket. "Chloe got taller than me, senior year of high school. I feel ya, bro, I feel ya."

* * *

><p><em>PPDC Internal Network<em>

_DJessop: Online  
>SPentecost: Online<br>KJessop: Online  
>TSevier: Online<em>

_DJessop: Evening, hula girls!_

_TSevier: Hey, Duc! How is Alaska treating you?_

_DJessop: Cold and dark._

_KJessop: Poor thing. His Australian constitution just can't handle it. Hi, Stacks!_

_SPentecost: Hello, Kaori. _

_DJessop: We had some excitement in Anchorage today._

_SPentecost: Dare I ask?_

_DJessop: Well, Stacker did warn me about the Beckets._

_TSevier: Uh-oh, I've heard about that pair. They can be as bad as Bruce and Trevin._

_SPentecost: I shudder. What have they done now?_

_DJessop: [Video Attachment. Click to play.]_

_SPentecost: What in God's name are they on about?_

_KJessop: Rehearsal for A Streetcar Named Desire?_

_SPentecost: In the drive suit room. I expected better of Yancy Becket._

_DJessop: They were cleared to resume exercises in Gipsy today, and discovered that young Raleigh has had a growth spurt. He's now an inch taller than his elder brother._

_TSevier: LOL! Poor Yancy! Have a heart, Stacks, he's traumatized!_

_KJessop: He's not taking it well. That is priceless. Go on, Stacker, you know it's funny._

_SPentecost: Never a dull moment with those two._

* * *

><p>On New Year's Day 2018, the first of the Mark-4's was launched: Hydra Corinthian, under the command of Stephanie Lanphier and Kennedy LaRue. Gipsy Danger had pride of place on the proving grounds in the Jaeger Guard of Honor, next to Yankee Star and several of the other Western mechs. Much to their disappointment, Sydney wouldn't give Devi and Suze leave to fly sixteen hours to Anchorage for the ceremony, but there was still a multi-hemisphere celebration going on: all of Class 2016-B's Rangers were finally active.<p>

Gipsy was deemed deployment ready again just under the ten week mark, and they were dispatched back to Los Angeles before the orange alert halted all Jaeger movement.

Life in LA was good, especially since they were now residing there with Romeo Blue's crew. Yankee Star was still undergoing some refits; she was still a marksman Jaeger, but Engineering and her pilots agreed that they needed to improve her foot speed, so she was staying in Anchorage as "senior" to Chrome Brutus and Hydra Corinthian.

The Gages loved Raleigh's table map, and the teams spent a lot of time goofing off with it. The media loved the four good-looking male pilots assigned to Hollywood's doorstep, and the Shatterdome MPs had a full-time job keeping the paparazzi away. (Carolina Olivares and Romeo's PR liaison had full-time jobs keeping their Rangers from doing anything too outrageous in sight of the media).

In the first couple of weeks of 2018, although Jaeger movement had stopped, most of the bases were still fairly relaxed, and the Gages took Raleigh and Yancy to some of their favorite spots in the region. They made "motivational appearances" at local schools to throngs of screaming, delighted kids, and sparred out on the grounds in the flesh or in their Jaegers to onlookers' delight.

They were still on orange alert at twelve weeks, though the shortest time between any attack had been three months, one day. The next movement in the Breach occurred January 19, 2018, three months and two days after Yamarashi.

"Whoa, that's an early one!" Christian exclaimed as they all came barreling into the war room.

"Or maybe he's really, really late to the New Year's party," Trevin suggested. "There go all the MLK Day parades."

"Please tell me K-Watch isn't still putting monitors down on the sea floor," Yancy said to Christian.

He shook his head. "They got the stop order thirty-six hours ago when we hit the twelve-week mark. Good timing, huh?"

"Really. Where's Cady and Tendo?"

"On duty in LOCCENT."

The wait for news on Ningyo wasn't nearly as bad as the one for Yamarashi; he turned southwest and headed straight for the Philippines and Indonesia. The North and South American Shatterdomes gave the stand-down order, but now the teams crowded around the monitors wondering where their classmates would end up.

It was Vulcan Specter and Lucky Seven who took the kaiju on in Davao City, in the southeastern Philippines. Whatever issues Devi and Susanti had with their senior partners outside the sims, the two Jaegers were a spectacular duo in battle.

Cady Spencer was practically turning cartwheels as the Australian Jaegers took turns pummeling and shooting Ningyo, who weighed in as a Category III, if smaller than Yamarashi. And it was Vulcan who took the final shot, with the Hassans wedging one of his "lava throwers" directly into the gaping wound they had opened in the kaiju's torso, and incinerating the bastard from the inside out.

The celebrations almost reached pre-2017 levels. Somebody overrode LA's Dome-wide intercom and played _Burn, Baby, Burn _no less than four times, in defiance of Marshall Ramirez's increasing threats_. _Given that it was the original 1977 Disco Inferno, Tendo Choi was the prime suspect, but nobody ever proved it.

* * *

><p><em>PPDC Internal Network<em>

_RBecket: Online  
>SHassan: Online<em>

_RBecket: Hail the shieldmaidens of Australia!_

_SHassan: Just call me Eowyn!_

_RBecket: What should I call Dev?_

_SHassan: She's always been a Xena fan._

_RBecket: Hey, didn't Xena have an affair with Hercules? ;-D_

_SHassan: You are dead if you tell her that, Rals._

_RBecket: LOL. So? Details, how was it?!_

_SHassan: Everybody has a mostly clean bill of health. We've both got bruised ribs from those body slams, and Herc's got some nasty burns. We're in Davao overnight, heading home tomorrow morning._

_RBecket: Is Scott still being a douchebag?_

_SHassan: He's mostly leaving us alone now. Still talks to our chests instead of our faces, but Marshall Ketteridge convinced him it's not worth the risk of a harassment charge - or a hanbō to the balls. Right before you launched, we had a fantastic spar with him. Dev stopped her bō right above his groin, and he knows that she could unman him and make it look like an accident._

_RBecket: Go Dev. Where is she?_

_SHassan: She's asleep. What about Yancy?_

_RBecket: Asleep too. Older siblings, they're so damn lazy._

_SHassan: Can I ask you something?_

_RBecket: Fire away._

_SHassan: After combat, did you feel different?_

_RBecket: Hell, yeah. It might not be quite the same since I was pumped full of drugs in the hospital for two days, but once I woke up, I know I did. You too?_

_SHassan: Dev and I ghost drifted before, but not like this. It's like if we're not touching, we're floating away. I'm actually scared to leave the room._

_RBecket: Yeah, it was like that for us too. Tanisha and Caleb didn't get hurt, but they in the same bed every time I saw them. (Don't tell them I told you that, they'd kill me.)_

_SHassan: Pilot confidentiality. :-) It's weird. We've read all the material about drift shock and how physical the pilots get, but it was all abstract. It's overwhelming in real life._

_RBecket: I had a moment in October, when we were about to drop. Just seeing Yamarashi there, ripping buildings apart, when I realized this isn't a sim, this is real, and those are real people. Afterward, even when my leg hurt so bad I couldn't see, all I could think was that I wanted Yancy and I was going to flip out if I couldn't feel him._

_SHassan: Tendo told us he lost it when you got hurt. _

_RBecket: Yeah, he kind of did. I see it in the drift sometimes. He was thinking like you said: it was all abstract before. Now it's real. Do you regret it?_

_SHassan: Becoming a Ranger? No. Did he?_

_RBecket: Maybe for a little while. People talked to him, once he saw I was okay, he got better, but it scared him._

_SHassan: Aww._

_RBecket: I probably shouldn't have told you that._

_SHassan: I won't tell. I know Dev thinks that way sometimes too. Maybe it's an older sibling thing._

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming Soon: _**_A new Jaeger arrives at the Los Angeles Shatterdome: Matador Fury. Our heroes navigate the court of public opinion, the slimy hands of gossip, political intrigue, and more base rivalries, and learn some valuable lessons in the process that aren't even about fighting kaiju __in _**_Chapter Twenty-Seven: Maestro_****_._**

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Translation: **"_Qué pasa, Abuela_?" = (Spanish) What is it, Grandma?

**Original Character Guide**

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative. Mid-60s, Mexican-American from San Francisco, survived K-Day and came out of retirement to join the PPDC.

Cady Spencer: Gipsy Danger LOCCENT Technician (along with Tendo Choi), Filipino-American, age 27 from Portland, Oregon.

Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, age 26, African-American from Atlanta, Georgia, brother of Chloe Warner.

Chloe Warner: K-Watch trainee in Honolulu, transferred after she and her brother Christian failed to become Rangers at Academy. Age 24.

Marshall Ana Ramirez: Commanding Officer of the Los Angeles Shatterdome, formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army, mid-40s, Mexican-American from Arizona.

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Rangers, pilots of Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark-3. First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 27 and 25, graduated Jaeger Academy in the same class as the Beckets.

Priya Katwal: Senior J-Tech Engineer, former NASA employee who helped design and build Gipsy Danger's conn-pod and life support systems, mid-50s, first-generation Indian-American.


	27. Maestro

_**Canon Note:**__ Guillermo del Toro reported that Matador Fury's pilots were prisoners, repeatedly given a promise by the Mexican government that they would earn their freedom if they piloted Mexico's Jaeger "one more time." Travis Beacham further blogged that even so, the two Mexican Rangers were not actually "criminals." This chapter contains my conclusions from these intriguing tidbits, but I've deliberately left some aspects vague._

_**Author's Notes:**__ This chapter also contains blunt portrayal of bigotry and injustice, but I want to make clear that innocent people can be imprisoned by their government in many countries for having the nerve to teach or learn - including here in America. History backs that all the way to Socrates. Kennedy LaRue's personal history in this fic is my own invention, but Mexico's aid to the US after Hurricane Katrina isn't - it was the first time Mexican Armed Forces had operated on US soil since World War II. _

_**Character Notes:**__ If Yancy's motives in this chapter seem a bit confusing, that's because Yancy himself is a bit confused. Also, just a reminder: this story is Gen. All non-canon relationships are casual._

**Chapter Twenty-Seven: Maestro**

_Los Angeles Shatterdome…  
>Late January 2018…<em>

After the January engagement, it was Musical Shatterdomes for the Jaeger Program again, as the irreverent called it. Romeo Blue swapped places with Yankee Star, partly to get yet another refit to their reactor, but also to put Yankee and her pilots back on their home turf with their tried and true partner.

"There's public pressure at work in stationing you," Carolina explained as she and Brady Harris briefed the four pilots. "Mexico wants Matador on their soil, but having him launch ready so far from a Shatterdome is a problem. So for now, he's coming to Los Angeles with you."

"Why don't they add a Dome in Mexico?" asked Raleigh. "They've sure got enough coastal cities to worry about."

Carolina's voice took on a rare, snide tone. "They want one. But even after Cabo, and the impact on the coastal economies, some within my ancestral country's government aren't willing to cede the control that the PPDC requires." She leaned towards them. "For their Rangers' sake, I'm glad."

Raleigh and Yancy looked at each other, as did Caleb and Tanisha. "We heard about that," Tani said. "They were prisoners. So were some of the other recruits."

Caleb mused, "I thought it was a little weird, when we met 'em in Anchorage. They're _real_ educated. College educated."

"Marshall Pentecost wanted to get them all amnesty, we heard," Yancy said, lowering his voice.

Carolina nodded. "Be very careful, my boys. _And _you two. Stacker Pentecost is a good man, with good judgment. This isn't just a delicate matter because of public relations and politics. Kaiju aren't the only threat to some of your fellow Rangers."

"What can we do?"

"A year ago, you four were the untried ones, being advised by the experienced teams. Now you've looked the devil in the eye – all four of his eyes," Brady smiled. "Teach them what you taught each other. Teach them what you've been taught and what you've learned. You four are very different people, but when it counted, you got the job done. I don't think there's any reason any team on Earth can't learn to work with another. No matter what anyone says, the enemy here will always be the kaiju."

Even so, Yancy wasn't at all sure what to make of the situation, and the shadow of threat that seemed to be hovering over their newly-arrived colleagues.

What did that imply about how they'd come to be imprisoned in Mexico for untold years? Nothing good. In a way, it was an alternative far worse than if these two Rangers actually had been criminals. At least then, it was just the two Rangers, here in front of him, that he might have to worry about.

Having learned from their previous mistakes, Team Gipsy and Team Yankee started training with Team Matador with drills and sparring rather than jumping straight into the simulator. Those first few days in late January were interesting, everyone sizing each other up again.

Where Raleigh and Yancy were among the youngest Rangers, Andrés Alcazar and Daniel Moreno were _the _two oldest, both nearly forty. They were quiet and serious, but didn't have quite the standoffish vibe that Yancy had gotten at first from Caleb and Tanisha. They were articulate in English and Spanish, and Andrés impressed Raleigh with his knowledge of war history. Like a lot of the elder members of the Jaeger Program, they seemed to alternate between finding Raleigh's energy endearing and exhausting.

Rationally, Yancy knew that being well-spoken and well-mannered didn't mean somebody wasn't capable of committing crime… but even the members of the crew who were far more worldly than him or Raleigh seemed to be getting a vibe from Andrés Alcazar and Daniel Moreno – a _good _vibe.

That was really disturbing.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" he asked Carolina shortly after Team Matador arrived.

"At this moment? No." She smiled and cupped his cheek like he was a kid. If they'd been in public, he'd have been mortified, but in private, he could admit he kind of liked it. "I know it bothers you, _muchacho. _That you care only reflects well on you and Raleigh. But there are steps being taken, and you must focus on your job – the threat coming out of the Breach. Don't let yourself be distracted."

So, as when he or Raleigh caught themselves drifting off target, they refocused their attention. And Yancy tried not to notice the way Daniel and Andrés sometimes eyed the fence around the Shatterdome and the people who crowded around it whenever they drilled outside. He told himself he was imagining the haunted look he sometimes saw in their eyes. After all, Tani and Caleb sometimes got that way; if Daniel and Andrés had been in the military, maybe they'd been in combat too.

It was quite a while before anybody got up the courage to ask.

* * *

><p><em>February 2018…<em>

Stacker wasn't surprised by the reports that came out of Los Angeles once Matador was installed. "Training is going far more smoothly from the start than it did with Gipsy and Yankee. Matador's pilots aren't interested in being in charge, though they certainly have impressive skill," Marshall Ramirez told him.

"I didn't think we'd have personality trouble with Team Yankee. How are the Beckets interacting with them?"

"They've heard the rumors. I think D'onofrio or Lightcap gave them some opinions, or maybe Olivares. Raleigh seems to like them; Yancy is a little more cautious. He'd probably like them more if his brother didn't like them so much."

"Alcazar is a war historian, isn't he? Has he seen the Beckets' map?"

"He has. That was the biggest smile I've ever seen from him. He had Raleigh absolutely enthralled, filling him in on Mexico's World War II involvement; that's not something most American schools teach. Raleigh drives some of the senior officers crazy, but he mostly tickles Daniel and Andrés. I can tell by the way they watch him. Daniel's been teaching capoeira to the Americans with some of his Brazilian crew. That won a lot of them over."

"Good. The more popular support we have for them, the better." Stacker was getting frustrated. He had nearly two dozen capable, trained recruits from 2017 who were stuck in limbo because Mexico would only consider clemency to the ones who made Ranger Ready.

"If you weren't prepared to give them to us, why'd you release them in the first place?!" Herc Hansen demanded during one of those frustrating conference calls.

"We agreed to let you train potential pilots of the Jaeger that _we _funded," Mexico's liaison retorted. "You are the ones trying to renege on the agreement by not returning the ones who failed. They all still have a sentence to serve."

"So let them serve it for all humanity," Admiral Yamamoto wheedled.

That same exchange was going round and round for weeks, then months after Matador Fury's launch. The UN didn't want to alienate Mexico entirely by overruling them on the subject of their citizens, but Mexico didn't want to risk its entire shoreline by destroying the cooperation of the PPDC and trying to publicly force the men's return. "What does it say about them that they had to raid their prison population to get drift compatible candidates?" Tamsin observed when Stacker told her about it.

It was all so much more complicated than good guys and bad guys, good cops and bad cops; Stacker knew that. But did it have to be so complicated when the ultimate bad guy was coming out of the Pacific Ocean every three to four months and smashing everything?

The breakthrough came from the last place any of the senior officials expected… but later on, Stacker wondered if he should have expected just that.

The human race had come together, setting aside old rivalries and pooling their resources... but only to a point. The leadership might have mostly prioritized the greater good, but within the general population (and the media) old rivalries and quarrels were still very much alive.

"Even in the Jaeger Program, we're still carrying Latin America's dead weight!" a bombastic right-wing pundit ranted. "So-called Matador Fury is parked in _our _Shatterdome, using _our _resources and _our _support staff, getting trained by _our _Rangers. Have they offered to cover their own coastline with their own troops? No. They funded the construction of that multi-billion dollar monster with money borrowed from _our _banks! And there they are, a couple of Mexicans with shady pasts, hanging out on _our _military base teaching Spanish and their damn Latin dance-fighting to _our _officers!"

"Why is Hydra Corinthian assigned to Panama City? Can't we have American Rangers defending American soil?" another bellowed.

It was actually Ranger LaRue who was the first one to challenge the xenophobes from her home country. "Kaiju don't notice national borders, and neither do Rangers. I feel the same duty to defend the people of Central America that I do for the United States, Asia, or Australia."

"But do foreign Rangers feel the same about America?" the reporter pressed.

The young woman's eyes narrowed. "Did you know I was born in New Orleans? The first rescue workers who reached my family after Hurricane Katrina were Mexican, not American."

_Well done, Miss LaRue. _Of course, that wouldn't get through to anyone who didn't want to hear it. Bigotry and xenophobia couldn't be overcome by either facts or sentiment, however powerful. The worst of the blowhards in the US media promptly dismissed Kennedy's remarks as "air-headed liberal parroting by a black lesbian cheerleader who went from the New Orleans projects to some hipster commune in Seattle."

However, word was getting around the Shatterdomes, and the ire of the other Rangers was rising. Whatever external challenges - and prejudices - they faced, Stacker's hopes for a community of mutual respect and protection among the Rangers were very much coming to fruition.

It came to a head early in the spring. The usual crowds had gathered around the Los Angeles Shatterdome to watch Matador doing a deployment drill. His sister Jaegers were out of sight, but their four pilots were on the edge of the grounds chatting with local children and occasionally fielding questions from reporters, also as usual.

Yancy Becket and Tanisha Davis were demonstrating the Bushido drills, while Raleigh and Caleb were narrating and explaining the exercises to a small army of grade schoolers - Caleb in English and Raleigh in passable Spanish. "You speak Spanish very well," a teacher said to Raleigh admiringly.

"_Gracias!_"

"Have you been learning it from Matador's pilots?" a reporter asked. Nobody missed the snide tone.

One of the children's chaperones said quickly, "I don't think so. Ranger Becket's using European grammar, not Latin American. Spanish-Spanish, you could say."

"We spent almost a year there when we were kids," said Yancy without breaking the rhythm of the drills. "Raleigh's got the mad language skills in our family. He picks 'em all up fast."

"I took it in high school too. I like learning languages."

Just then, an order came through some of the radios in earshot from LA's LOCCENT - in Spanish. "Do _Matador's _Rangers speak any English here in America?" sneered another reporter from some Fox subsidiary.

"Their English is perfect." The edge in Raleigh's voice was unmistakable, but for the professional agitator paparazzi, it was blood in the water.

Yancy and Tanisha had the sense not to show alarm, but concluded their spar and strolled with deceptive casualness towards the scene. "Our turn, Rals," murmured Caleb.

The youngest Ranger didn't move, eyes locked on the reporters as the teachers made ready to pull the kids out of the way. Watching the broadcast, Stacker could imagine someone (possibly Tamsin) shouting, _Danger, Will Robinson! _

The aggressive pseudo-journalists pressed on: "Why is it that out of all the Jaegers, Matador Fury is using the most resources from other countries? Shouldn't a country with as big a coastline as Mexico be contributing more people and funds if they want _us _to protect them?"

"Jaeger Program support crews come from all over the world," Raleigh shot back, eyes flashing. "And there are actually over a dozen qualified officers who could be on Matador's support crew _from _Mexico if the work visa situation could get straightened out. Dunno if it's their immigration issue or ours, but it'd be nice if it could get straightened out before the next attack!"

That generated a lot of confusion among the media, followed by a lot of digging... and with their backs against the wall, Mexican Immigration finally signed off on the release for the recruits who'd failed the Academy cut to become PPDC officers.

Caitlin Lightcap crowed about wisdom from the mouths of babes, which drove Stacker mad. None of the Rangers were children, not even Raleigh Becket.

Tamsin sent him an amused email that evening. _How I feel for Yancy Becket. Keeping that headstrong boy reined in must be a full-time job. _

* * *

><p><em>Los Angeles Shatterdome…<br>March 2018…_

After Team Matador had been on-base for about six weeks, Yancy's tension level finally got unbearable, and he decided he had to do something about it.

He timed his own move for when Raleigh was at the beach with a bunch of Team Gipsy's crew. The angel of his better nature warned him that Raleigh would _not _be pleased, but he shoved it aside. This was a long-overdue conversation.

He found Andrés and Daniel in the Kwoon, sparring with a combination of capoeira and kickboxing rather than Jaeger Bushido. They nodded to him and finished, but he made no move to join in. The knowing look they exchanged then was the same as what would pass between any other pair of Rangers. "Is something on your mind, Ranger Becket?"

"Just seeing what I can learn," Yancy deadpanned.

That got a faint smile from Andrés, and they didn't resume their match. "Raleigh doesn't try to hide what he thinks."

"No." _He hasn't figured out that sometimes it's a good idea. _

Daniel picked up his water bottle and observed, "You try, but I'm afraid you're not very good at it." He took a swig, but beckoned with his free hand as if inviting Yancy to attack in a spar.

What could he say that wouldn't sound ridiculous? _I don't like you impressing my kid brother with Mexican war history? Quit being so polite and complimentary during training? I don't actually think you're up to something but I still don't want you to get too close? _

His face was starting to get hot. He really hadn't thought this through. Now Raleigh was going to see it in the drift and be pissed - with justification. What _was_ Yance's problem?

"You don't have to worry about us," Daniel told him.

Yancy sighed and went for a hanbō, starting drills just for something physical to do. "I'm actually not," he admitted. "I don't think you're up to something." _I'm just a whackjob who gets bent out of shape when anyone who isn't me mentors my brother. _

To his surprise, both older men seemed to understand. "You've always been responsible for him. That's a hard habit to break." Andrés met him in slow motion, unarmed, but still scored the first hit.

"You have brothers?"

"Not anymore." Yancy winced and backed out of the spar. _Serves me right for asking. _"It has been a long time. Come," said Andrés. Yancy reluctantly returned, but his heart was incredibly not in it. _I don't even know what it is I'm so scared of. _

After winning three rounds in a row - four hits to zero - Andrés gave up and just sat down on the edge of the mat while Yancy paced. Daniel watched. "We know word gets around. Some of the rumors are true."

"Which ones?" He studied the concrete walls, imagining not a gym, but a prison. "The ones where you're all here under duress?"

That was the idea that had Raleigh the most worked up: that Matador's pilots and the other former prisoners had been forced into the Jaeger Program, turning fighting kaiju into some kind of half-assed Hunger Games. Appalling for sure, that the position of Ranger could be used as a tool of oppression, but Yancy also considered the converse: that all the other jockeys in this fight would be at risk if their back-up wasn't here by choice.

But Daniel and Andrés were shaking their heads. "To pilot Jaegers is the greatest honor either of us have ever been given," said Andrés. "It's a joy, driving Matador. Not easy, no, but I don't think you would call it easy to pilot your Gipsy."

With a weak smile, Yancy shook his head. "I doubt I'd love it so much if it _was _easy."

That was what it all boiled down to, wasn't it? Maybe just pride, that two guys dismissed as no-accounts and also-rans had succeeded where thousands of star athletes and valedictorians had failed. They could control the greatest, most dangerous and complex weapons ever invented by human hands and killed the greatest monster ever seen in human history. It was dangerous, it was painful, it was scary... but they'd done it.

_People call us heroes. We can save the world. _

"Some men back home believe they have us under duress," Daniel mused. "We don't mind letting them think so. It's one more protection for the few hostages we have left."

"Hostages?" Yancy's blood ran cold.

"When power is at stake, entire towns can become hostages. The quest for power doesn't stop, not even now with monsters in our midst. For some people, K-Day was only an opportunity."

Yancy leaned against the wall, waffling back and forth over whether it was absolutely necessary or absolutely heartless to ask the question, and finally decided there was nothing for it. "What were you before? What'd you do?"

"The most dangerous things in the world: writing and teaching. History and law are even more threatening weapons than Jaegers to some people."

A part of Yancy supposed that he had no reason to take these men at their word. The story was like a movie cliché... but all clichés started somewhere, as Raleigh liked to point out. And it certainly fit with the facts and the attitudes he'd seen from the others. The bigots in the US could assume that they were a bunch of drug lords, and maybe Godfather types could be as articulate and engaging as Daniel and Andrés... but Yancy wanted to think that the whole damn Jaeger Program wasn't so collectively gullible.

"Getting the other officers assigned... did that help or make it worse?"

"It helped." Andrés chuckled. "Your brother's an impulsive boy, but we're all grateful."

"Are they your family?"

"No, there's no blood family left for either of us." _Jesus. _"But they're friends, some we only met recently, but who all were locked away for similar reasons."

This was scary as fuck. "Is the whole government corrupt down there?"

"No, not at all. But there are corrupt and powerful factions in every country, and challenging them can be dangerous." Daniel gave him a smile that finally looked a little calculating, but it didn't bother Yancy much. "From here? Standing in the shadow of our Jaegers before the eyes of the world? It will be different. And in the process, we can still protect our homes."

He felt like a complete idiot. "You know Raleigh's going to see all this."

"Of course. You're drift partners. We wouldn't have told you if we didn't want him to know." Yancy raised an eyebrow, and the older men shrugged in unison. "He's not the most discreet, but we do owe him for the risk he took. We will take the risk to trust him - and you - with the truth."

Pride shimmered to life at that, not for himself but for his headstrong, temperamental kid brother who was so easily ruled by his heart instead of his head, but would pick principle as his guide every time no matter the risk. So much of the objective data labeled Yancy Becket as the "better pilot." But maybe Raleigh Becket was the reason they could be called heroes.

On the other hand, Yancy would now have to explain this conversation the next time they drifted. "He's gonna be pissed at me for talking to you like this," he admitted.

That got him a matched pair of knowing grins. "Then don't wait for the drift to make your confession." Andrés gestured to the clock. "Kaiju wait for no man."

Yancy had to laugh.

* * *

><p>The weather was perfect, and the beach was crowded. In Anchorage, people would still be wearing snow boots. Not that Yancy and Raleigh hadn't spent plenty of winters in warm climates, traveling with Dad's jobs when they were younger, but there was a real mystique about California that was hard to resist.<p>

Rumor had it that the Gage twins could find each other in the woods blindfolded thanks to the drift. The pair did seem to have an uncanny awareness of each other even days after their most recent handshake. On a whim, Yancy tried it once he found the small flock of Jeeps and Hummers that had been checked out from the base.

The results of that experiment were inconclusive; he couldn't be sure whether he was sensing Raleigh or just very aware of the place Raleigh would be most likely to hang around - namely, with the crowd of bikini-clad women playing beach volleyball.

Tendo spotted him first and yelled; Raleigh turned around and grinned like the sun coming out. "Look who finally dragged himself out of his cave!"

"Come help us, man, it's Team Gipsy against the world!" urged Antwan.

"I suck at volleyball," he laughed.

"So do the rest of us; you'll fit right in. Come on!" Nicola Harris moved to haul him into their eleven-person formation against about twenty people on the other side of the net. Yancy didn't know a lot about volleyball, but was pretty sure they weren't following any Olympic-sanctioned variation.

And only after he missed a shot did he discover there was a penalty: being dunked into the ocean by your own team. Oh, well.

By the time the sun went down, Team Gipsy had a disgraceful point deficit, and Tendo was convinced that Nicola Harris was missing shots on purpose because she was enjoying getting thrown over Raleigh's shoulder for her penalty dunking. "He better watch it, though - he does know she's Brady's niece, right?"

"Cousin, twice-removed or something like that," said Brandon Pines, digging around in their cooler to see what drinks were left. "They're cute. Whiskey Gamma approves. What've you been up to all day?"

"Relaxing. You whippersnappers work too hard at having fun," Yancy replied, sprawling on the sand. "Well, this isn't bad. Maybe I'll try sunbathing next time."

"First time you fell asleep? Brother, I can't even imagine what Rals would do with the suntan lotion," said Tendo.

"No kidding. I'd have to hire a bodyguard."

Raleigh now had Nikki on his shoulders, playing chicken with another boy and girl in the surf. _You could almost imagine there were no kaiju, _thought Yancy.

He didn't recognize the other couple; they weren't wearing dog tags, so they weren't from the base. College kids? Locals, vacationers on spring break, maybe? _Would that be us if we weren't Rangers?_

A wave of melancholy went through him completely at odds with the happy scene, and Raleigh suddenly turned and looked at him. His inattention got Nikki knocked into the water, and for a few minutes, he and his playmates were preoccupied with fishing her out.

"It's gonna be really embarrassing for this crew if one of you drowns," Tendo yelled at them as they came back up the sand.

"Not my fault he's got no balance!" Nicola protested. "Besides, we got our lifeguard." She pointed at Antwan, who did seem to be on the constant lookout.

"Someone has to make sure these Alaskan polar bears survive down here," the Jamaican shouted over his shoulder. He eyed the beach patrol and observed, "They'll be running us off as soon as it's dark."

"Aww, we've got leave 'till eleven!" Raleigh whined, and Nikki and some of the others joined him.

"Come on, come on, people recognize us, let's set a good example," Yancy urged. He joined Antwan and Brandon and the fuddy-duddies among Team Gipsy in rounding up the rest of the crew, getting appreciative mutters from the cops.

"Hey, none of us are drunk," Raleigh pointed out, slinging an arm around his shoulders. "It's been good wholesome water sports all day. You should've come earlier."

"I like my peace and quiet, _and _my air conditioning," Yancy replied. To his relief, Raleigh had definitely sensed something was on his mind, and he waved Nikki and Tendo off to one of the other cars.

"What's going on?" his brother asked once they were driving. Yancy swallowed and stared at the road. "Yancy, what's wrong?"

"Nothing... nothing major, just... " He pulled them over at the entrance to one of the parks that had closed at sunset and got out. _Just get out with it, dumbass, you're freaking him out, and it's your own fault. "_I needed to tell you before we drift, I kinda got into it with Daniel and Andrés today," he explained in a rush.

Raleigh froze, the passenger side door still half-way closed. "_What?!_"

"I mean - not a fight. Not even an argument, really." For what that was worth. He sighed. Why was he doing this? _Because if he sees it in the drift - and he will - it'll be a fight then, and we can't afford that. So we have to talk about everything, like the therapy session that never ends. _It was a choice between talking it out now in semi-private, or talking it out with the psych team breathing down their necks. "It was about you," he mumbled. He didn't even have to look up to sense his brother's change from confusion to wariness. "I didn't... I thought they were trying to influence you."

_Sort of. Actually, I didn't even think they were trying to, just that they were. _

A long, painful silence followed, and when Raleigh finally broke it, his tone made Yancy cringe. "Sometimes I do not have a clue what's going on in your head, Yance, and by now, that's kind of weird. Do you seriously buy that Fox News bullshit about them being drug kingpins?"

"No! No, nothing like that. It's what everyone with a brain smelled from the beginning: a political thing. Andrés is a historian... I think Daniel's a lawyer, actually. Or a law professor. They pissed off somebody powerful and got shoved into jail to shut them up."

Although Raleigh had been gnawing at the gossip like a dog with a bone for weeks trying to figure it out, he seemed barely interested now. "So what was today about?"

This was so damn embarrassing. "You," he muttered. At the exasperated huff, he sighed, trying to hold off a reaction he knew he deserved. "Don't be mad."

"I'm _not _mad, I just don't get what you're talking about!" For someone not mad, Raleigh's voice was rising. "After everything, you still think I don't know how to take care of myself?!"

When he put it like that, Yancy felt like even more of an ass. "No. I know you can. You proved it a long time ago."

"Then what's the problem with..." Raleigh trailed off, and Yancy could almost see him running his mind over his own interactions with Andrés and Daniel, now measuring Yancy's reactions. "Yance?"

"Yeah. That's what you'll see in the drift, me being an insecure idiot, making a fool of myself. Surprised they didn't laugh in my face."

"You mean you're..."

Was it really such a stretch of the imagination? Then Yancy pondered their history, everything he'd seen in the drift from Raleigh's perspective and even his own, and his heart sank. Maybe it really was astonishing for Raleigh to hear anyone suggest that Yancy was the insecure one. Let alone that Yancy would be jealous.

Yancy Becket was the accomplished brother, the one with the higher grades, the sports skills, the natural pilot. They both knew the entire litany. Yancy tried not to lord it over his brother, but... that awareness had been there in both of them, even before they'd ever heard of drifting. And Yancy was supposedly the confident one, the strong one, the clear-headed one.

_Almost two years in, the damn drift is still teaching us lessons about all the things I'm really not... except maybe a phony. _

Worst of all was the way Raleigh's voice changed. "I'm sorry."

"_Don't," _he almost exploded, and felt his brother flinch. _SHIT. _"You're not the one who's supposed to apologize! I'm the one being stupid."

"Maybe." Raleigh's hand came to rest on his shoulder, and Yancy covered it with his own, glad it was dark so his brother couldn't see the look on his face. "Or maybe I just assume too much. That you know stuff because we drift, and I don't have to tell you." He gave a ragged laugh. "Maybe those damn psychs actually do have the right idea when they keep telling us to _talk _about stuff."

Laughter burst out of Yancy too, but it eased the knot in his chest, and he let Raleigh pull him into a hug.

They managed not to chase that rabbit during the next drift, but what did flow through it was their shared awareness of where questions like that did come from. _Inside our own heads, not each other's. _Raleigh had it too, that deep, gnawing fear of loss that obeyed no rational knowledge or emotional reassurances.

It really wasn't fair that even drifting couldn't completely wipe it out.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Chapter Twenty-Eight: **__All a nineteen-year-old guy wants is some uncomplicated fun in Los Angeles. But nothing's uncomplicated when you're a Ranger in the spotlight of the world, as Raleigh is still discovering the hard way in __**Chapter Twenty-Eight: Something To Talk About!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.

Brady Harris: Yankee Star's Public Relations Representative. Late 30s, African-American from San Diego.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative. Mid-60s, Mexican-American from San Francisco, survived K-Day and came out of retirement to join the PPDC.

Antwan Ferrier: Gipsy Danger Personnel Coordinator, directs Whiskey Gamma, a team of Strike Troopers. Age 39, Jamaican national.

Brandon Pines: Support chopper pilot for team Whiskey Gamma, one of Gipsy Danger's four strike trooper teams, early 30s from Monterey, CA, transferred from the US Air Force.

Nicola Harris: Rescue/recovery EMT with Whiskey Gamma, age 21 from San Diego, CA, daughter of Brady Harris's cousin and a Guatemalan immigrant.

Andrés Alcazar and Daniel Moreno: Matador Fury's Rangers, Mexican nationals, age 39. Andrés was a historian and Daniel was a lawyer, both writing and working against institutional corruption before imprisoned for an unknown period. They were released along with other non-violent prisoners to attempt the Jaeger Academy, but have not yet been granted a pardon.

Marshall Ana Ramirez: commanding officer of the Los Angeles Shatterdome, Mexican-American, mid-40s, formerly a US Army Lieutenant Colonel

Admiral Daichi Yamamoto: commanding officer of the Tokyo Shatterdome, Japanese naval admiral, mid-50s.


	28. Something To Talk About

_**Author's Notes:**__ Okay, dear readers, good news and bad news. The good news is, my summer of unemployment has ended, and I have a new job! Yay for job! The bad news is, that amid a VERY hurried relocation and starting my new work, I'm going to have to slow down updating. Rest assured, this story is finished, but its co-prequel and sequel are not done, and I don't want to run out of story and have to leave you hanging. So updates shall now come once a week, usually on Saturdays or Sundays. In a few weeks, once I'm settled in, I'll see about speeding them up again. Please be patient and continue to give your reviews and feedback!_

_**Additional Note: **__ This was another chapter where I had to hold my nose to realistically portray the perspective of male privilege and cruel gossip. Even our heroes can be immature and lacking in empathy, and as we all know, the media and public can be merciless towards celebrities._

**Chapter Twenty-Eight: Something To Talk About**

_Los Angeles Shatterdome…_

_March 2018…_

Team Gipsy, Team Yankee, and Team Matador were determined to make those last couple of weeks count before the Pacific-wide orange level alert had them all stuck on-base. They had a blast. There was still a lot of work every day: training, drilling, exercising, and getting lectured on K-Science and J-Tech. But during off-hours, there was off-base leave, and the ample sources of entertainment in the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area as a reward.

The high schools and colleges were on spring break, and all of southern California seemed to be in a hedonistic, optimistic mood. There were available girls and available guys of all ages, races, and gender preferences – nobody on any of the teams seemed to want for dance partners (or bed partners). The pilots got by far the most attention, but all that anyone on Shatterdome staff had to do was flash their dog tags if they wanted company.

For the most part, Raleigh did bask in the constant attention of the local girls, and took up for than a few on their offers, and nobody had a problem with it. Yancy also had his share to choose from, as did the others. Some of the crews found themselves a steady squeeze among the civilian population, but the majority kept it all casual - and kept their options open.

The media did chatter about the Beckets as they did about the other pilot pairs whenever a Ranger was spotted with a date or a dance partner (or doing the Walk of Shame), but according to Carolina and Brady, "As long as it's all between consenting adults, only the most stuffy souls complain."

On the other hand, Raleigh had to catch himself a few times, like one of the last nights that they were out at a dance club in Santa Monica and he was getting attention from a whole squad of local girls. Cady Spencer won his undying gratitude by hurriedly handing his drink to his own paramour and pushing through the mob to hiss in Raleigh's ear, "Watch it, bro, my friend over there just warned me that crew've all got fake IDs."

"What?!"

"_Underage!_"

_Oh, shit!_ He'd been having a great time up until then, debating on whether he wanted to take off with that insanely tanned Baywatch blonde or the Scarlett-Johannsen-as-Black-Widow lookalike when the place closed - now he was desperately looking around for an exit. _Jesus, is this what high schoolers look like nowadays? Help! _

Rescue, or at least a contingency plan, came in the form of a dozen or so female Dome staff, parading in to bellows of appreciation. A bunch of local spas and salons had offered special discounts to PPDC employees and military personnel, and a lot of the women had accepted with elation and organized a Girls' Day Out. Well, some of the male personnel had taken them up on it too. Hadn't Yance decided to go get a massage? Yeah, there he was, looking thoroughly relaxed.

The Jaeger Flies hadn't noticed Raleigh's sudden panic, and were now squealing over the sight of Yancy and demanding that Raleigh introduce them to his brother. Instead, he took the cowardly way out and just bolted, running to admire his female comrades, dressed up in heels and styled hair rather than the coveralls they had to wear on base.

"Look at you ladies! I need to send those salons a thank-you note!"

"Don't think we're wearing these dresses for you, Becket!" teased one of them, but most of the others were striking poses, and even the guys who swung for other guys expressed their appreciation.

Yancy smelled a rat and pulled himself out of his chair on the pretext of bringing Raleigh a drink. "What's the matter? One of your circle of friends getting weird?" he murmured, noting the hovering, increasingly-frustrated Jaeger Flies.

"No, but Cady says that whole group's underage."

"Uh-oh!" Even Tanisha was in a dress, but thoroughly enjoying his discomfort. "Better watch it, Baby Becket!" She was on Caleb's arm, her dog tags just visible under her glittering jewelry. Caleb didn't seem interested in the locals, not even the male Flies, and always stuck close to Tanisha and Team Yankee.

"Raleiiiigh, come back and dance with us!" called the incognito high schoolers.

"Uh, I'm... tired." Not his smoothest response ever.

"Yancy, hi, Yancy, then you have to take his place!"

"No, thanks, ladies, I think I'm a little old for you." Yancy said cheerfully, and turned to the others. "I never had a massage before today; that was fantastic. We should've had that for physical therapy."

"I thought you were even more mellow than usual," Tendo observed. "So we - hel-_lo, _lady in red! Miss Harris, you are gorgeous!"

Nicola Harris had obviously taken full advantage of the salons and shopping today; her dark brown curls were newly streaked with black and gold, and she'd exchanged her coveralls for a red halter dress. Raleigh was more enthusiastic than he needed to be and practically dragged her over to the bar to buy her a drink. She was startled, but nice enough to just go with the flow, and worked out that he was trying to dodge his own admirers.

"Now there's a new one - Raleigh Becket actually _looking _for a cockblock. What's the matter? Nothing good on the buffet tonight?"

"Nothing _legal," _he informed her.

"Aww, poor baby, having to be responsible!" Great, now she thought he was a wuss. Catching his embarrassment, Nikki relented and linked an arm through his. "Chill out, Spunky; there's no law that says you have to pick up a Fly every time you go out. We can keep it all in the family tonight."

Well, there were worse fates. He smirked at her. "You sure? I can wingman you and check IDs if you don't want that dress to go to waste."

Nikki sputtered in mock-outrage and shoved him. "What makes you think _this _has anything to do with anybody who isn't me? Some girls dress up because it's fun, and not because we're looking to impress anybody else, Mister!"

"Okay, okay!" he raised his hands in surrender. Obviously he'd tripped over some feminist thing. Luckily, she was in too good a mood to be annoyed with him. (Maybe she'd gotten a massage too. He'd have to try that sometime.)

They hung on each other's arms for the rest of the night, ignoring the pleas and huffs from the underage Jaeger Flies - who were eventually caught and run out by the bouncers. The legal ones still hovered, but most of them seemed to get that Raleigh had declared himself unavailable for the evening, and wandered off to try their luck with Yancy or some of the crew. There were a few snide remarks thrown at Nikki, which annoyed him, but she just laughed it off and invited him to dance. (Despite knowing by then that Raleigh Becket was a godawful dancer.)

Despite her considerable dance skill and his complete lack thereof, they had a great time. Returning to the Dome after the clubs closed, they ended up in her bed.

* * *

><p>Raleigh was nervous the next day when he arrived for drills with the other pilots. This was the first time he'd spent the night with any of the Shatterdome staff.<p>

Nobody actually said anything; it was all sly grins and winks from most of the crew. But Raleigh was very aware that he had not only Yancy to deal with, but also Brady Harris, who was cousin to Nikki's father. It wasn't like Raleigh or Nikki were looking for anything serious... but Brady might have a problem with that, and in turn, Yancy might.

_I really didn't think this through. _He didn't get up the nerve to broach the issue to his brother or Nikki's cousin, and neither of them broached it to him, so he took the cowardly approach and just avoided it.

However, Nikki wore that red dress again the next time the crews went out, and Raleigh ended up dancing with her again – and ending the night in her room again. It was easy to just have fun and not worry about whether she'd do a tell-all interview or try to claim she was his girlfriend.

A few nights later, Brady and some of the older staff were out and about too, and Raleigh nearly had a heart attack when he saw Brady in a hushed conversation with Yancy. "Uh, Nikki, don't mean to alarm you, but..." he jerked his head towards their relatives.

Nikki measured them up, and muttered, "He knows he's got no say in what I do." But she shot Raleigh a nervous look. "Is your brother... okay with this?"

"I guess I better ask him."

He was still trying to figure out how, and the two of them were contemplating making a discreet exit when they found aforementioned brother and cousin side-by-side, hanging over the nightclub's stair railing, glaring at them like parents who'd caught them sneaking through a window... with the same eyebrow raised. No way that wasn't rehearsed and staged - and judging by the howls of laughter from their suddenly-assembled colleagues, obviously Yancy and Brady had put the word out.

Nikki huffed loudly, and Raleigh just laughed in relief. "You jerks!"

"Here's the deal," Brady informed them, and pointed his thumb at Yancy. "I won't kill his if he won't kill mine. Just remember!" He pointed at his eyes, then Raleigh, and Yancy did the same at Nikki.

"GOD!" Nikki ran up the stairs to start punching her cousin. "You - are - not - my_- papí_, you damn Bilbo Baggins nut! You stay outta my business! And YOU!" She pointed at Yancy, getting a chorus of "ooooh!" from Tendo and the rowdier onlookers. But although Yance was grinning, Nikki was apparently as unsure about going all-out on him as Raleigh was towards Brady, and she glared, but finally gave him a very mocking salute. "_Ranger!_"

"You should be saluting me too," Raleigh pointed out to Brady.

Brady Harris was one of the regular members of the Los Angeles Shatterdome M*A*S*H* marathon-watching club, and didn't miss a beat, but Altered Salute By Placing Thumb On Nose.

"Yeah, he's real intimidated by you, Becket!" snorted Tanisha. "And he writes press releases!"

Raleigh and Nikki lost that one on points, and fled to a bar that wasn't full of Dome staff and Jaeger Flies for the rest of the night. They wound up hanging out on a waterfront dock more suited for fishermen and commercial cargo than clubbers, and had The Talk. Well, not The Talk that Yancy'd had to have with Lea Franklin, so Raleigh supposed it was The Other Talk.

"I'm not looking for anything serious," Nikki told him.

That was... a relief. "Neither am I," he assured her. "Not that you're not fun," he added hastily. "And... you know, sexy as hell." He hoped she knew that, since they'd now spent several nights in each other's beds, choosing each other instead of off-base partners.

She grinned easily. She was closer to Yancy's age than his, but more like Raleigh when it came to taste in entertainment. Well, physical entertainment, anyway. Outside of the nightlife or outdoor activities (or bedroom activities) Nicola Harris and Raleigh Becket didn't have a lot in common. This was the first "quiet conversation" they'd really had about anything other than dancing techniques or sports.

But... if neither of them were planning on getting serious, what did it matter? She was an awesome dancer and didn't care that he wasn't, and she could hold her own anytime the Dome crews organized a ball game of any kind. Could they really just keep this uncomplicated?

"Pretty soon, we'll be stuck on base until after the next attack. People might take that as a commitment thing." _Oh, smooth, Raleigh_.

But she blurted out her next question as if she'd been working towards it. "Is your brother really okay with us? I mean - us in any form?" She was more nervous than he'd ever seen her. "I don't want to cause you two problems, not ever."

"I'm..." Raleigh ran his mind over Yancy's reactions since he and Nikki had hooked up, and was fairly sure of his answer. "I'm pretty sure he is. He wouldn't have staged that stunt with Brady tonight if he had a problem. He gets really stiff when he disapproves."

That eased her mind, and she held out a hand. "Then I'll make you a deal: we're gonna be bored once we're confined to base. We can hang out, have fun, as long as we _don't _go thinking we're committed to anything."

Raleigh grinned and pumped her arm. "Deal. We keep it uncomplicated. We have fun."

* * *

><p><em>Los Angeles Shatterdome…<em>

_April 2018…_

There was much groaning at the LA Shatterdome - as well as every other Shatterdome - when the clocks ticked their way up to the twelve-week point, and off-base leave for personnel came to an end. Having to behave and stay on-site was always stressful for the crews. No visiting family or significant others, no enjoying the weather except in the spaces they could scrounge up on the base, never mind the beach that was so tauntingly close. And there was the growing awareness that the next attack could be only days away.

Things got really tense about ten days in, right as they were coming up on red alert. First, a major electrical fault zapped Yankee's systems during a full launch drill, injuring everyone working in the conn-pod including Caleb and Tanisha. That shut down the whole base for over a week, leaving Yankee Star's pilots off-duty until the medics could finish evaluating them, and Matador and Gipsy's crews prohibited from deployment drills or even sim work until the engineers and electricians figured out what had happened.

So people were grumpy, anxious, and bored, and freaking E!TV nearly sparked another flashover.

The skies opened up and drove everyone who was off-duty indoors. Raleigh was frustrated and irritable even after he and Yance did several rounds in the Kwoon with Daniel and Andrés. Yancy decided on a nap - no surprise there - and Raleigh hung out in the rec room with some of the other off-duty guys, including Matador's pilots, playing cards and flipping through the TV channels.

E! was doing some sort of news roundup which included a segment called _Jaeger Watch_. Basically, it was just a gossip fest about the Rangers. Anytime Raleigh was on it, he got that segment in his email from about a dozen different people.

Most of today's was centered on the reported romance between the pilots of Shaolin Rogue, and the rumor that Scott Hansen had been in a fight at a strip club in Sydney. Raleigh smirked to himself and refrained from repeating any of what Devi and Susanti had told him about the younger Hansen. He saw a couple of the engineers who'd spent time in Australia exchanging knowing looks too. Yeah, nobody doubted that story.

Then his name came up. _"Right until the Los Angeles Shatterdome halted off-base leave for the Jaeger crews, Ranger Raleigh Becket had been painting the town consistently with a sultry rescue/recovery worker named Nicola Harris! This certainly disappointed a lot of the local girls, and it seems Miss Harris has a less than stellar reputation even within the Jaeger Program."_

Raleigh stiffened, and conversations in the rec room got quieter. The anchor went on, _"Although neither Becket nor Harris have confirmed the status of their relationship, TMZ and Perez Hilton are reporting that Harris is well-known as a femme fatale among her colleagues. Becket fans warn that she's cheating on her Ranger boyfriend with multiple civilian and Defense Corps lovers, and today we got a tip that she's now under investigation for conduct unbecoming an officer! The PPDC press office refuses to comment on any open investigations. Draw your own conclusions."_

The rec room was now dead silent. Raleigh's skin started to crawl. "The hell?" someone muttered.

"But..." That was his own voice. "We're not... Nikki and I aren't even..." He wasn't Nikki's boyfriend! How could she be cheating on him when they weren't even in a relationship?

Who the hell would report her...

_Yancy. _And Raleigh saw red.

"Rals, hey! Whoa, hold it, buddy!" He was halfway to the door, not even able to think through the roaring in his ears, but Tendo near-enough tackled him, and a minute later, he had Andrés and Daniel pulling him back as well. "Let's not panic, okay?"

"He _can't _do that - " Raleigh hissed.

"Who - aw, hell, you mean Yancy? Okay... somebody go get Yance. _No, _Rals. Kiddo, breathe!" Tendo shook him. "You do not need to go swinging first and asking questions later. We're gonna ask him, all right? No jumping to conclusions!"

_But he does that, he just goes and does stuff like that, behind my back, anytime I've got anything of my own, he takes it, and if he can't take it, he wrecks it - _

Raleigh let Tendo pull him back into the rec room, where someone had wisely turned the TV off. Someone had also called for PR rep backup, and Brady came running in with Carolina at his heels. "Raleigh, listen, none of us know anything about this."

"Nicola is on my strike troop squad," Antwan insisted. "If she were on report, I'd know!"

"Hell, _you _would know by now," Brandon Pines added. "You're one of her superior officers!"

His heart started to slow down at that, and everything started reorienting. "You can't believe every rumor the gossip mills publish," Carolina told him. "You and Nicola aren't even dating, are you?" He dully shook his head. "Well, then that's one thing they've got wrong, and I promise you: E! and Smoking Gun and the rest of those types will publish anything that anybody puts on Twitter as if it's the word of God."

Andrés and Daniel came back with Yancy - and Nikki. She looked frantic, but as soon as Yance set eyes on Raleigh, his face hardened. To Nikki, he remarked, "Look at him. It never even occurred to _him _that I had nothing to do with it."

The knot of smoldering rage in his stomach turned into a lump of stone, and he couldn't get rid of it. His face was hot, but he couldn't answer his brother. It was Andrés who spoke up, his voice cautious. "Yancy? Aren't you also jumping to conclusions?"

Yancy looked sharply at him, then he too started turning red. Well, at least Raleigh wasn't the only one rapidly getting embarrassed as hell. "Okay, everyone out," Antwan ordered. "Come on, this ain't Jerry Springer; if your name ain't Becket, get lost. Shoo!"

But Carolina stayed, and Nikki shook Antwan and Brady off when they tried to lead her away. "This is about me too; I'm not going yet. Go on." They cast dubious looks at her and Raleigh and Yancy, but reluctantly left and shut the door.

Carolina looked from one brother to the other. "Both of you: deep breaths. Yancy is exonerated - but you know Raleigh might have had reason to suspect you."

Yancy faltered, and when he looked at Raleigh again, his eyes weren't so hard. Raleigh felt something crack inside. _It wasn't him. _

"After last time... I wouldn't do it again," Yancy muttered, looking away. "You make your own decisions, I know that. And even if... " he waved absently towards Nikki. "Even if I didn't like you, I wouldn't have done _that._"

"I got a call from a couple of reporters asking me for comments," Nikki said. "Yesterday." Raleigh blinked at her. "I looked up my own record; there's no investigation. I asked Marshall Ramirez. Even she says it's bullshit."

"Then where'd this come from?" Raleigh asked helplessly, looking from her to Carolina. "Her 'cheating' on me, she can't cheat on me because we're not together! I mean - not that - " _Shit. _

But Nikki laughed weakly and waved him off. "I know, I know. It's fine. Well..." Now she folded her arms. "You and I had a deal, and that's fine. No commitments. But if it's gonna cause a problem with your brother, it's not fine."

Yancy rounded on her, but he looked desperate rather than angry. "Harris, I _didn't_ - "

"I believe you!" she exclaimed. "But I'm still not risking being the cause of any fights between the pilots; there's too much at stake! I couldn't fucking _live _with it, Becket!"

"There's _not_ a fight, Nicola," said Carolina. She smiled. "Just a misunderstanding, and these things happen. Especially when the paparazzi get involved. You and Raleigh have been seen together, so you're the subject of gossip." Now she paused, thoughtful. "As for who is really behind it, I suspect some of the young ladies who tried and failed to attract his interest in those last few weeks."

"What?!" Yancy and Raleigh chorused. Now Nikki looked as confused as Raleigh felt.

"How could Jaeger Flies know whether she's under investigation?" Yancy protested.

Carolina snorted. "They don't! And it doesn't matter to them either way. They say vicious things about the young women they see with the object of their desire. There were entire websites dedicated to hating on that redhead you dated for a few weeks, you know!" Yancy flushed again, looking torn between embarrassment and outrage.

"That's slander," Raleigh muttered.

"Actually, libel, but it's no more preventable than the affirmative action lines about Caleb and Tanisha or the drug dealer stories about Andrés and Daniel. Or the drop-out claims against you. You're celebrities, Raleigh. This is part of that life, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it."

Raleigh badly wanted to hit something. Carolina's so-cool, so-unconcerned attitude was really grating on him. "So what's your job, then?! I thought you were supposed to handle this stuff! What good's having a PR rep if any asshole can spread bullshit and screw with our heads?!"

"Rals, stop it - "

"Don't '_Rals_' me!" he yelled, wrenching away when Yancy tried to put a hand on his shoulder. "God, I am so sick of your fucking patronizing! Yeah, okay, maybe you weren't behind it this time, but every time I turn around, you're telling everyone who's allowed to talk to me and who's not, sticking your nose in my business! Why the hell should I put up with - "

"WE'RE AT ORANGE LEVEL!" Nikki screamed at them. They stared at her, and she hissed, "_Stop it_! Both of you, whose ever fault you think it is, whoever's pissed off and whatever the reason, fucking _stop_! You're our pilots; you can't do this!"

Why did she sound so scared? Raleigh swallowed hard and mumbled, "We're not... we're not going to..."

Carolina put a hand on Nikki's shoulder. _"Brothers fight," _she murmured in Spanish. _"It's not the end of the world._"

She knew perfectly well that both Raleigh and Yancy had enough Spanish to follow that. So did Nikki. _"They're not just brothers,_" she hissed. _"They're our Rangers. Their moods can be life or death, the psychologists said - _"

She caught herself, but Raleigh stiffened, and saw Yancy's eyes narrow. "What'd they say?" Yance asked. Nikki looked down, biting her lip, and even Carolina avoided his eyes. "What?! _In Spanish if you want,_" he added sarcastically, and both women cringed. "What, have they been training the support staff on how to deal with us?!"

"Yes!" Nikki exploded, looking like she wanted to hit him. "And I don't understand why they thought you shouldn't know that! Brady says it's the same with the other teams; part of all our job is to keep the damn Rangers sane because it _is _life or death! And God knows, you do _not_ make it easy sometimes!"

Well, that was… uncomfortable.

Carolina sighed. "All three of you, calm down. Better yet, _sit_ down." She pointed each of them at chairs until they obeyed. "Yes, the Corps psychologists have declared that it is the responsibility of all personnel to keep their Rangers fit to fight - and they're partly right." Yancy buried his face in his hands, and Raleigh wanted to crawl under the map table and hide. "That's true in every line of work, civilian or military. That's why you're the ranking officers after the Marshall. Your job and your emotional state are intertwined, perhaps more than ever in history. So your support staff's responsibility is also to maintain the latter."

Raleigh's face was so hot with embarrassment that he was sweating. "We didn't know," he mumbled.

"Well, that was one of Psychiatry's more pig-headed decisions - not including the Rangers themselves in these discussions."

"And they keep nagging _us _to talk," Yancy spat. "That's reasoning for you."

"I agree with you, and that has been pointed out to them. Maybe now that some of you - not just in this Dome - have found out, they'll see the flaw in their logic. The remedy is more talk, not less." With a sly smile, Carolina turned towards the door, but paused and raised a hand when Nikki started to stand up. "Ah-ah. Not yet, niña." Nikki started to protest, and Carolina pointed at her. "This involves you still. For now, you stay." She let herself out, leaving Nikki inside with Raleigh and Yancy.

Raleigh looked at her, feeling defensive. "Just because we argue doesn't mean we're gonna break up the team."

She folded her arms and looked away. "And what if there's movement in the Breach today? Tomorrow? You really gonna tell me this is a safe place to start from?"

This had really scared her. Shame started to grind at Raleigh, imagining for the first time how it must actually _look _to the support crew when he and Yancy got into it.

_"You're not free to approach anger and frustration the same way that ordinary people are, because you are not ordinary people,_" Pentecost had said.

"We got trained too, you know," he told her. "'Conflict resolution' for Rangers." She cracked a weak smile. "Pentecost had a big lecture for all of us a year ago, and god knows the psychs have been at us since. Even if this were a big thing, and it's - it's not," he said awkwardly, looking at Yancy. Yancy nodded confirmation. "We'd get it resolved. Whatever it took. We wouldn't let it carry over into the conn-pod, no matter how mad either of us were."

Nikki let her breath out and rubbed her eyes. Back in the drab, shapeless uniform with her hair tied up, no make-up, she looked tired and stressed out. The girl in the red dress on the dance floor was far away, and so was the boy who'd danced all night with her. Now they were EMT and Ranger again, with jobs to do and lives on the line, and nothing was uncomplicated anymore.

"I kind of got it... when the psychs told us not to discuss the training with you," she admitted. "They put it like that you shouldn't be under any extra pressure from us. We're supposed to be helping you. They _are _right," she insisted. "At least... kind of. Anyone can replace me. Nobody can replace either of you."

"You're not expendable," Yancy said sharply, before Raleigh could. "None of you are!"

She rolled her eyes. "Don't be chivalrous, Becket. It's not true - it's _not!_" She glared when Raleigh too tried to protest. "You two, Tanisha and Caleb, Daniel and Andrés, every damn one of us has a duty to lay down our lives for yours. The C.O.s told us that from Day One, and they're_ right_. There's not a damn one of us who isn't okay with that." Raleigh looked at Yancy in dismay. Nikki shook her head, seeing their shared resistance "We lose the pilots, we lose the Jaeger. Kaiju don't give a shit about democracy or equality."

There really wasn't much either of them could say to that. But hearing it in such blunt terms... and imagining it... it made Raleigh feel sick. _ I don't want it to be like this. Being heroes is one thing, but were we really signing up to first into the lifeboats? And that everyone around us gets treated like shit by the press and there's not a damn thing we're allowed to do about it?_

"It's not fair," he muttered.

He heard her answer coming as if they were drifting. "Life's not fair, Spunky."

Yancy laughed softly. "I should get a gold star for not looking in the drift to see if she calls you that in bed."

Raleigh reeled, sputtering and appalled, and Nikki smirked. "I'd slap your face, but you're my superior officer. So I'll salute you first and _then_ slap your face."

That got Raleigh laughing, and Yancy cowering in mock-terror. "Okay, that's my cue to run for my life." He stood up.

"Wait - "

" - It's fine," Yance insisted, motioning Nikki and Raleigh to stay. He looked at Raleigh. "We're fine, right?"

Another time, not long ago, Raleigh would've been irritated that Yancy would make that call... but not now. Yance knew they were okay, and he was leaving it to Raleigh to iron things out (or not) with Nikki. "Yeah, we're good. I know where to find you later."

"Asleep," Yancy chorused with him, and now Nikki laughed too. He waved at them and left.

Raleigh looked at her and raised his eyebrows. "Are _we _okay?"

She avoided his eyes and chewed on her lip. "We're okay, yeah." He heard the "but" coming a mile away. "We had a deal, though. No complications." She gestured at the darkened TV screen. "If you're going to flip out anytime someone calls me a slut, then it's complicated."

Raleigh winced. "I really think that's making me a monk if I can't ever get pissed off, even if it's not a committed thing. It'd be wrong even if the guy wasn't me, Nikki."

"Sure, it's wrong. But Carolina wasn't kidding; jealous little bitches will see you with a girl and make shit up, and the press will eat it up, and there's nothing we can do about it. I like you, Spunky." He smiled weakly. "But I can't - if you can't ignore that, then I _can't_. I just can't live with the risk, not even casual. Not with a Ranger. You're committed to _that, _and so am I." She came over to sit down next to him. "Nobody ever said it was fair."

"I get it," he sighed. "Guess I'm just naive, that I didn't realize how fucking petty people can be." She hadn't been at all surprised by this, he realized. All her alarm had centered on him and Yancy and how it would affect Gipsy. Team Yankee had scoffed when Raleigh and Yancy had been furious about the way the press treated them. Team Matador just shrugged off the insults.

Then again, while the high school drop-out, dumb jock digs were annoying, it didn't bother him and Yancy that much, so maybe it was just protectiveness - but there was a hell of a difference between that and people slinging racial slurs or calling every girl they went out with a whore! That was a hell of a burden -

_But it's not supposed to be our burden, _he realized miserably. _That's what they're trying to tell us. It's not our job to protect them. We can't. We're supposed to be focused on the kaiju._

"And I wondered why none of the unmarried Rangers have a significant other," he mused.

Nikki smiled. "Or maybe they just don't talk about it." _Good point. Because it's nobody's business. _"You remember what they told us second term about drifting? That if you want to stay in it, you have to let some things float by. You and your brother figured out how to do that once, when a lot of us couldn't. You gotta do that with life sometimes. Trust us girls to handle ourselves, too."

"Point taken." Was this breaking up when they hadn't really been going out to begin with? "I need to find Yance. Let everyone back into the rec room."

She leaned forward and kissed him between the eyes. "You've got a good heart, Raleigh Becket. So does your brother. I'm not about to break it, and don't let the Jaeger Flies do it either."

When she left, he sat there for a few minutes longer, even though he knew he ought to quit hogging the place. Funny that nobody was banging on the door. It was pouring rain outside and people were restless and bored.

Maybe it really was just because he was the Ranger. _Damn it. _That left such a sour taste in his mouth. He got up and left the door open on his way to quarters.

Yance wasn't asleep; he was at the desk reading some new K-Science report on the interface. He turned away from it and studied Raleigh as he shut the door behind him. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Raleigh sighed. It was barely dark out and he felt ready to go to bed himself. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "For thinking you'd... do that."

Yancy turned the screen off and got up; Raleigh needed no urging to wrap his arms around him. "I should've - there's something else I should've told you after I made an ass of myself about Matador. Just... I made a promise. To myself, that I wasn't going to interfere in your life anymore. Not even if I thought I was right and you were - making a mistake. I don't have a right. Stopped having a right to do that a long time ago. You're an adult, and you've got a right to make your own calls."

Raleigh leaned back and gave him a mock-skeptical look. "But that doesn't extend to you and Brady Harris giving Nikki and me the Eyebrows of Doom?" They both laughed. It'd been a few days since they'd done any drifting thanks to the electrical fiasco, but he wasn't quite ready to let go yet. "I noticed... for the first time, really, every Ranger who isn't involved with their partner says they're single. Maybe they're just quicker on the uptake than we were, about how nasty the world is."

"Maybe. I looked in on Caleb and Tani earlier; they're out of medical, by the way." Yancy released him and sat down. "Did you know Tanisha's got a son?" Raleigh blinked. "Yeah. My reaction. He's twelve. He's more or less in hiding with her family, to keep the scavengers away from him." He leaned back, studying Gipsy's emblem that they'd stenciled on the door with a stamp of their first kill below it. "That's what Carolina and Brady and the other reps spend a lot of their time doing. Keeping the press off our families. I did some googling of us. Apart from all the tabloid jerks, none of the mainstream press talks about Jazmine. Nobody publishes stuff about the Rangers' families."

Raleigh sat down on his bunk, considering that and everything it implied. "I guess that's something."

* * *

><p>A few days later, the weather had cleared, and the MPs were being indulgent of the crews signing autographs for a mob of teenagers on the edge of the base property. Everything was fun and cheerful, just rowdy, free-for-all Q and A, until a girl handed Raleigh the photo she wanted signed and remarked, "I <em>really <em>hope you're not _actually _going out with that slutty Harris woman!"

Yancy's heart nearly stopped. Raleigh froze in place, as did Team Yankee and Team Matador, and some of the other Flies began to chime in. "Gawd, yeah! She's so skanky!"

"You can do better, Raleigh!"

"Did you know she's got like five boyfriends?"

"She dresses like a hooker!"

Yancy started to move, but Tanisha grabbed his arm hard. He glared at her, but she and the others were all watching Raleigh.

He just stared at the girls, jaw clenched, until everyone quieted down and started exchanging uneasy glances. (Well, the reporters on the scene were visibly delighted.)

Finally, Rals got his voice back. "I think that's all for today." With a thin, frigid smile, he dropped photograph and pen on the ground and turned his back, ignoring the cries of protest. The rest of the now-disappointed teens soon turned their wrath on the big mouths.

"There you go, kiddo," Tani murmured in his ear. "Ain't no law says we have to talk to them." They all followed Raleigh back to the Dome without a glance backward.

Yancy's next heart attack came when he found Raleigh on Gipsy's Facebook account. "Maybe you should let Carolina - "

"I don't want to," Raleigh said tightly. "I want it to be from me." But he did sit back and beckon him to the screen. "Take a look."

In response to a reporter's post asking about his "defense of your girlfriend from character attacks," he'd written, _I don't have a girlfriend. I've got friends and fellow PPDC officers, and those attacks wouldn't be okay even if it was my worst enemy. Raleigh Becket._

The brass wanted them to run every public comment from their personal accounts through PR first. Raleigh hadn't hit Post yet. For a few seconds, Yancy's throat actually tightened up. "Kiddo…" _We should still run this up the flagpole – fuck it. _"Sometimes I'm so proud of you it makes me sick." Raleigh grinned, and Yancy ruffled his brother's hair. "Post it. Then log off so I can too."

Once it was up, Yancy logged onto his own account and added his own two cents onto the thread: _What he said. Yancy Becket._

**_To Be Continued..._**

**_Coming Next Week: _**_Movement in the Breach! The kaiju that emerges may be smaller than Yamarashi, but it poses the same kind of threat that destroyed Talon Tasmania in **Chapter Twenty-Nine: Eight-Legged Freak!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.

Brady Harris: Yankee Star's Public Relations Representative. Late 30s, African-American from San Diego.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative. Mid-60s, Mexican-American from San Francisco, survived K-Day and came out of retirement to join the PPDC.

Cady Spencer: Gipsy Danger LOCCENT Technician (along with Tendo Choi), Filipino-American, age 27 from Portland, Oregon.

Antwan Ferrier: Gipsy Danger Personnel Coordinator, directs Whiskey Gamma, a team of Strike Troopers. Age 39, Jamaican national.

Brandon Pines: Support chopper pilot for team Whiskey Gamma, one of Gipsy Danger's four strike trooper teams, early 30s from Monterey, CA, transferred from the US Air Force.

Nicola Harris: Rescue/recovery EMT with Whiskey Gamma, age 21 from San Diego, CA, daughter of Brady Harris's cousin and a Guatemalan immigrant.

Andrés Alcazar and Daniel Moreno: Matador Fury's Rangers, Mexican nationals, age 39. Andrés was a historian and Daniel was a lawyer, both writing and working against institutional corruption before imprisoned for an unknown period. They were released along with other non-violent prisoners to attempt the Jaeger Academy, but have not yet been granted a pardon.


	29. Eight-Legged Freak

_**Author's Notes:**__ My apologies for the delay, dear readers! Between starting my new job AND relocating to a new town, I've been run ragged! (And I've still got no internet at the new place, so tonight's update comes from the local Panera!) With luck I'll be more organized this weekend in time to update with the next chapter._

_**Citation: **__ The poem that Antwan recites to the Beckets is "Octopus" by Ogden Nash._

**Chapter Twenty-Nine: Eight-Legged Freak**

_Los Angeles Shatterdome, May 20, 2018…_

In May, as the PPDC's kaiju alert level went from orange to red, word got around that the brass was thinking of trying something new. The collective reaction was, "Uh-oh."

"'Group pre-deployment.' What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Now that we have over twenty Jaegers, the Marshalls want to try to intercept the next bogey early, see if we can start bringing the death toll down."

On May 20, they got to put the new strategy into action. Four months and one day since Ningyo, a Category II came swimming out of the Breach. It might have been a little smaller than the last few, but when the new sonar and spectrometer images were broadcast around, nobody was being dismissive. "Great. Another eight-legged freak," said Yancy.

"Maybe not that big, but we're definitely gonna want to tag-team this guy," Tanisha agreed.

"Please let them codename him Octopussy, please let them codename him Octopussy - "

"Tendo!" But they all laughed, and even Marshall Ramirez had a suspiciously-timed coughing fit.

He/she/it was codenamed Grindylow, which disappointed Tendo, but most of the Ian Fleming fans in the Corps at least had some appreciation for Harry Potter (or the mythology that JK Rowling had drawn from).

K-Watch had been keeping very busy in each interim, and despite the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, their work with oceanographers and geographers installing a web of monitoring stations and mapping currents was finally yielding results. They sent out their first prediction within two hours of the first alarm: this kaiju would be moving east, towards Central and South America.

Yankee Star was deployed first, for a long haul to the outskirts of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. "We're going to see if we can't do better by the Pacific Island population," Ramirez told them. "You and Diablo Intercept are our distance shooters. You may not be able to close with him if he runs, but drive him away from the populated islands."

"That's an insane amount of surface to cover for two Jaegers," Christian Warner complained as Team Matador and Team Gipsy fidgeted around the war room. "Unless he's _real _aggressive, they won't be able to close with him unless they snag him onshore."

"It is an experiment," Daniel agreed. "But better than leaving thousands of people to fend for themselves."

After Grindylow surfaced, seemingly just for the purpose of shredding an unpopulated weather monitoring station, Yankee and Diablo ordered the choppers to drop some small surface charges nearby and get his attention.

"_'Will you walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?_'" purred Felipe Jara, Diablo's right hemisphere. He got chuckles from some of the more light-hearted souls.

"Dunno about the fly, but the octopus is coming up your winding coral reef, Diablo," announced one of the choppers. "_We've got him visual now, he's coming up - WHOA!_"

The watchers in the war room recoiled and shouted as Grindylow exploded out of the water like a flying fish, lashing his assorted limbs at the spotters. Luckily, he missed, and Tanisha yelled, "_Choppers, ascend, all of you! Get off our shoulders!_"

Her order didn't come a moment too soon. "Here we go!" Antwan Ferrier announced, pointing at a wake trail on the screen. It was headed straight for Yankee and Diablo.

This kaiju didn't have the turtle armor of Yamarashi, but the long-range missiles still didn't make as satisfying a wound as anyone hoped for. Diablo moved in and snared several limbs with his retracting, electrified whip that the media had dubbed "the devil's lash." Grindylow screamed and convulsed, churning up water and chunks of coral and stone.

"That whip is _awesome!_" Brandon Pines breathed.

Raleigh grinned. "All Yance and I can think of when we see it is Iron Man 2."

"But the difference being that this one is awesome."

"Yeah, I'm on board with that," Yancy agreed. "Pass the popcorn!" (Actually, they were eating protein bars, rice cakes, and bananas, the standard pre-drop alert diet, but the point stood.)

They were hoping to see a limb or three get severed, but Grindylow's sinewy flesh was tougher than it looked, although Yankee and Diablo inflicted some beautiful wounds. Finally, the mutant octopus gnawed free of Diablo's chain and retreated, getting zapped deeply by Yankee's lasers all the way.

"_He's running!_" The Jumphawks descended from behind the Jaegers. "_If he tries again, we'll get in front of him!_"

"_Mierda_. _We've got a problem with our retractor, Yankee. Gear is ripped open; the lash is hanging loose_."

"_Park yourself on Majuro, Diablo, in case he gets around us and runs at them_."

"_That's confirmed_," said Marshall Pentecost, commanding the two Jaegers from Lima. "_LOCCENT's picking up electrical shorts throughout your left hemisphere, Diablo. Do not engage again unless you have to_."

_"Jumphawk Crew Tahiti Magic, ready for liftoff with Yankee Star."_

_"Cleared for liftoff."_

_"Good work, sharpshooters!"_

Yankee ended up not engaging Grindylow again, since the bastard seemed to have had enough of the South Pacific islands. He ran fast and deep to the northeast, and Japan dispatched Coyote Tango to Hawaii to join Chrome Brutus, who was already waiting. But the bogey disappeared from the detectors without breaking the perimeter line for the Hawaiian Islands.

"K-Watch thinks he's veered further east, ma'am," Christian advised Marshall Ramirez, shamelessly exploiting his sister's insider tips (not that there was any rule against it.)

"All right, Matador, Gipsy, on deck," Ramirez ordered. "Plan for a long wait in your pods."

"He just popped up again off Jarvis Island," Christian informed them as they finished suiting up. "Took out a bunch of deep-sea vessels, but didn't stick around. He's still aiming East."

"Wonder if our Hydra girls will see some action out of Panama today," Yancy mused.

"Could be, Bro. Panama just made the executive decision to skip Rio Sentry's formal launch. They're running her down now to hang out in the canal entrance itself."

"Damn, that'll be a long first day for them," Raleigh muttered. "What's the bogey's ETA?"

"Current speed, about seven hours." Everybody wrinkled their noses. "Yeah, get comfy in those suits, my friends. Anybody hungry?"

Team Gipsy killed time hand-feeding the Rangers and making jokes with various levels of crudeness. By all accounts, it was the same in Matador's drive suit room, and in many of the other Western Shatterdomes.

"_Hey, Becket boys, did you see what the Tunaris said when they got the bathroom question?_" called Tendo from his station in LOCCENT.

"Oh, this'll be good. Are we keeping with the Iron Man 2 theme today?" Yancy snorted.

"_Uh-uh. Vic said 'we go to the bathroom the way astronauts do.' Kid asks how astronauts go to the bathroom. Gunnar says, 'I dunno, I'm not an astronaut!'_"

"Niiice!" Half the room crowed, while the other half groaned, "Boooo! Bad joke!"

"I thought it was a good out," Raleigh stage-whispered to Yancy, who just rolled his eyes. Then the Dome siren went off, and he started choking on his rice cake. "Shit!"

"_Rangers and crews, this is Marshall Ramirez. Bogey has surfaced one thousand miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas, still moving east. Prepare for immediate deployment_."

"_And _Ranger Becket 2.0 chokes to death," huffed Christian, giving Raleigh a water bottle as the rest of them hovered waiting for him to catch his breath. "You okay, man?"

"I'm good, I'm good," _*coughgasp*_ "Just gimme another mouthful."

"If we weren't in a big hurry I'd be running with that one. Somebody write it down for later."

"Last call if you're thirsty, Yance."

"Yeah, I'll take it. Write that down too." They managed to end Raleigh's imitation of Joffrey Baratheon without much trouble, and got the crew into their helmets and online in the conn-pod for drop.

"_We all set, Becket boys?_" asked Tendo, proudly manning Gipsy's drop station.

"Good to go, but do we know _where _we're going?" demanded Yancy.

"_Acapulco. Matador's deploying to Salina Cruz, Chrome Brutus to Cabo. Hydra's going to Acajutla, El Salvador, and the rest are spreading out in front of the major cities all the way down to Panama City_."

"What happens if he runs south?" Raleigh asked, shooting Yancy a worried glance as they went through their checklists. "Isn't that leaving Lima exposed?"

"_They've already got Romeo Blue on the way to Lima, and Coyote Tango's coming to LA. Unless Octopussy goes supersonic, they'll be in position before he can get there_."

"That works for us. Releasing for drop!"

Once they were airborne and en route to the drop point, they checked in on Grindylow's position. "_He's making an all-you-can-smash buffet out of the shipping and fishing traffic," _said Brandon Pines from his command chopper._ "Our ETA is five hours, and at this rate, we'll all be waiting for him, even the ones with longer rides._"

Yancy made the mistake of turning on the radio channels for some of the vessels that were in the kaiju's path. They could only stand to listen for a few minutes before turning it off. "Fucking Christ, didn't they get the goddamn warnings?" he growled.

"_Not many ships can move that fast, my friend_," said Antwan from Brandon's chopper. "_The local and private fishermen may never have gotten the warnings, and only the fastest ships or the ones close to shore could get out of the way_."

"_A lot did_," added Nikki Harris. "_Three hours ago, there were almost twice as many on the radar, and some of the ones still there are air evacuated. Your Alpha and Beta R&R crews are going offshore, so are Matador's. We're staying with you._"

Even before they reached handshake position, the kaiju's path changed and so did the plan. "_He's starting to jog due east, picking up speed_," Tendo reported. "_Looks like Mexico's in the clear, now he's looking at El Salvador, maybe Guatemala_."

"Can we get ahead of him?"

"_We're pushing it, but it's gonna be close, and we have to keep altitude. Bastard took out a Coast Guard chopper in the air with twenty people on board_."

"God damn it! I thought Diablo and Yankee did some damage!" Raleigh fumed.

"_Rangers, this is Marshall Ramirez, prepare for neural handshake_."

_Finally! _That was the first sentiment in both their heads as they plunged into the drift.

_"'Tell me, O Octopus, I begs, is those things arms, or is they legs?'"_

"_By the time we're back, Antwan, we expect you to have re-written that poem for kaiju."_

_"Challenge accepted, Yancy-man!"_

_The PR reps spend a lot of time protecting the Rangers' families..._

_Monkey in the middle with Jazmine..._

_Dad's dead. He never saw us launch. It was too late anyway._

_Tanisha has a son in hiding to protect him..._

_I don't have a girlfriend..._

_"They devoted entire websites to hating on that redhead you dated for a few weeks, Yancy..."_

_"Not many ships can move that fast..._"

The beep from the command console brought them back to the here and now. The bogey was ahead and below them, running at an angle towards the coast of El Salvador. They calibrated in a hurry, getting admonitions from Tendo back in LOCCENT to take it easy. "_Hydra Corinthian's already in position, and Solar Prophet's deploying to La Libertad, El Salvador_."

"_Gipsy, you're being deployed on the ten-mile mark at the Guatemala-El Salvador border_," Marshall Ramirez told them. "_Engage at will, but keep your eyes out for friendly fire_."

"Copy that, ma'am. There's still a lot of vessel traffic," said Yancy. It took the Jumphawks a couple of tries to find a position where they wouldn't hit something, though most of the boats around them looked abandoned. Some large ferries and Coast Guard cutters were heading into the harbors with crowds of rescuees on their decks.

_"Believe me, we know. Local militaries are mobilizing everything they've got, but this kaiju is fast. Be ready."_

_"Gipsy, this is Matador, we're dropping ten miles due west of you."_

"We see you, Matador," said Raleigh, marking the Mexican Jaeger's blip on the radar as they settled in the shallows. "You've got a really big ship to your west, and he's not moving. Maybe check on him, make sure everyone's evacuated."

"_We'll call him_."

"_This is Hydra Corinthian, deployed ten miles off Acajutla, El Salvador. Visual contact with target. He's heading right for us_."

"_Solar Prophet here, ten miles to your east, Hydra_."

"We've staked out one hell of a perimeter," Raleigh remarked. He - or maybe both of them - were a little sorry that it looked like Grindylow was going to pass them by, but at least their teams could get to work rescuing people.

"_Ay, madre de Dios!_ _LOCCENT, this is Matador Fury; there is a disabled passenger ship twelve miles off Puerto San Jose, at least two thousand people aboard!_"

Raleigh and Yancy cursed in chorus with everybody else on that comm frequency. _"Is she under tow yet?"_ demanded Ramirez.

_"Yes, but they're moving at three miles per hour."_

_Oh, shit. Oh, shit. _ That bogey was still running at Acajutla, but if he veered away before or after Hydra and Prophet went at him, he could be on that ship in less than an hour.

There was a pause, then all the Rangers started talking at once, including Raleigh and Yancy. _"Matador, go get them! You can take her to dock faster!_" Prophet's pilots yelled.

"_We'll buy you the time_," Steffie vowed.

"We'll cover you from the east," said Yancy, and Raleigh heard the thought that he almost blurted out: _Just go, don't wait for permission, just go!_ His brother restrained it - barely.

"_Target one mile and closing, still on approach to Acajutla, Marshall!_" called Kennedy. "_We can hold him!_"

The comm buzzed. "_Matador Fury, you have permission to leave your post and assist the vessel. Gipsy, Prophet, and Hydra, hold the miracle mile and keep Matador covered_."

"Copy that!"

"_Eight hundred meters and closing_!"

The kaiju was gathering his arms, cruising towards Hydra in a weird, half-upright position - "Hydra, he's gonna jump!" Raleigh shouted.

"_We're on it!_"

The monster gathered itself and launched, but Kennedy and Stephanie were ready for him. Hydra had had to be dropped out in the Arctic Ocean to test her most powerful weapon - a massive pressure pulse launcher that could level concrete buildings in its path and shatter windows in the same radius as a nuke. Nobody knew exactly what the mechanism was - some insisted it had to be anti-matter.

But in any case, the instruments registered the air pressure blasting out like an invisible air cannon, and even ten miles away, Raleigh and Yancy _felt _Gipsy sway and _heard _the sonic boom through her iron walls.

It caught Grindylow mid-leap and hurled the thing, roaring, back in the opposite direction, back-flipping over and over, Kaiju Blue spraying from its midsection. "NICE!" Raleigh yelled.

"_We still have signature, Hydra!_" warned LOCCENT.

"_He's sinking... this is Prophet, we can't deploy flaretorch from a distance underwater_."

"_We're moving up!_" Steffie called. "_So that was Hydra's breath, let's show him Hydra's feet_."

_Must not ask why they don't have two more heads... _Raleigh thought, and felt Yancy grin.

Hydra's feet were actually expanding web-like contraptions on her hands. Kaiju-strength concertina wire, as the joke went, creating a three-dimensional surface of razor-sharp shredding ability more than ten feet wide on each hand. Hydra lunged and narrowed one of the nets into a clamp that pinned Grindylow to the seabed by two of its arm/legs. The thing screeched and lunged, and Hydra slashed freely with her free hand, even raising one leg to deliver some kicks – they had it on their feet too.

More Blue colored the froth from the waves, but then Hydra's foot worked a little too well - it went through the two arms it held, shortening them by half, and Grindylow wasn't about to stick around. "_FUCK, he's running!"_ They fired Hydra's propulsion jets, but only one was working. They couldn't catch him. "_GIPSY!_"

He was running west, straight for Raleigh and Yancy, and beyond them, Matador and the stricken ship. They had only a minute to brace themselves. God, that bastard was fast, leaving a toxic plume of Blue in his wake like octopus ink, legs out behind him.

Yancy was already charging the cannon. "We need to pin him, no matter what!" They braced. Hydra was in pursuit, but her one working jet wasn't even at full power. Gipsy was on her own. "NOW!"

They dove and caught the kaiju's upper body in a full tackle, hurtling end over end deeper into the ocean. Alarms blared, pain lanced through both of them from impact with kaiju and seabed. Even the iron of their skin was being scoured because the bastard was _dragging _them. "Cannon! Hit it!" Raleigh yelled.

"Charging plasma cannon! Hang on! Activate rear jets as soon as I fire!" Yancy ordered. Raleigh grabbed for the control and braced himself.

Yancy aimed over the thrashing legs at Grindylow's torso and head. The first shot went wide, the second glanced off and nearly sent them flying as he thrashed. The third blew off one of its limbs.

There weren't suckers on the kaiju's leg/arms like an octopus, but small, fang-like teeth that probably held things like a spider - but at the moment, they were doing some massive damage to Gipsy's hull. It was all Raleigh could do to keep his grip. The outer skin of the legs and torso was hard and leathery and slippery in the water.

"Fire the rockets!"

"Wait - wait - " They needed to change this bastard's direction first. Raleigh managed to catch one foot on the sea bed, and the momentum swung kaiju and Jaeger around. Off-balance and disoriented, he locked his eyes on the instruments and caught a dizzy view of Hydra and Prophet still following - _now!_

He fired the jets, and the impact knocked the wind out of him and Yancy, but it was enough to force Grindylow back to the east. On and on, they tumbled and fended off those endless limbs and hacked and pounded with one hand while hanging on for dear life with the other. "Matador, where are you?" Yancy panted into the comm.

"_Five miles offshore!_"

_Not much longer. _

But they were taking a serious pounding even when Grindylow wasn't managing to bite or slash them. "_Gipsy, let go!_" shouted Sunya from Solar Prophet.

"No!" Raleigh held on as their bucking kaiju swerved again to dodge the other two Jaegers. "Can't risk - him getting - " That meant he also couldn't fire his own cannon.

Yancy managed to load his and blew another couple of arms off, but the wild thrashing had them ass over teakettle, and soon all he could do was hang on too. Until they realized they were heading for an underwater cliff. "_GIPSY, you're going over the shelf!_" Kennedy screamed.

"Damn it!" They let go and clawed at the sand and muck until they'd halted the Jaeger's momentum. They found themselves on a sea bed several hundred meters deeper than where they started. "Shit."

"_Are you guys okay?!_"

"Yeah," Yancy grunted, as they struggled to translate all the shrieking alarms and red displays. How the hull wasn't compromised completely, neither of them could guess. "Hydra, where's Matador?"

"_Almost to shore - they're carrying the damn ship. Bogey's still running out - wait, he's stopping. Just... floating there_."

"Sink, you eight-legged freak," Raleigh grumbled as they hauled themselves back to the shallows. They were both going to be walking bruises after this.

"_Gipsy_," called LOCCENT. "_What's your status?_"

"Lotta dents, but structural integrity's holding," Yancy reported as they finally started getting their breath. Toggling through the system checks, they found a lot less damage than they'd feared. "Hydraulic pressure is good, conn-pod undamaged. We're okay, LOCCENT. Returning to our post. We'll have to wait him out."

It was a weary underwater trudge back to their various positions But then, they both saw the kaiju's silhouette start moving again even as LOCCENT and Hydra and Prophet started yelling - it was speeding up, now aiming northwest - straight at Puerto San Jose. "Charging jets!" Raleigh yelled, and prayed they were still working. "Matador, you've got incoming!"

"_Trying to intercept from the east!_" Hydra was fast, but with only one jet, they could tell she wouldn't make it. If Gipsy's own jets failed, they were screwed. As it was, despite their head start, they were going to cut it very close.

At the point of the miracle mile directly south of Puerto San Jose, they were aiming themselves like a flying Superman trying to be as aerodynamic - or hydrodynamic - as possible, but it wasn't going to be enough and the bastard was honing in on Matador and that huge ship in his arms...

Raleigh slapped a hand down on the rescue horns. He wasn't really sure why he did that; he liked blasting them, but who knew if the damn kaiju even had ears!

But Grindylow turned, and on its slashed, ugly head, Raleigh swore he saw its eyes focus on them.

It changed direction. "_Gipsy, incoming!_" LOCCENT yelled.

"That was the idea." The kaiju was apparently done running, and that was fine. Two pulses of plasma nailed him in the shoulder, and Gipsy herself came in their wake and slammed into the kaiju's upper body. They heard its gurgling roar and felt the sharp surface of its arms slashing at them again, but it didn't seem quite as powerful an attack as before.

Maybe they were finally wearing this bastard down.

"_We've reached the docks!_"

"_Matador, watch out for waves!_" someone warned. Gipsy and Grindylow were further in the shallows now, dangerously close to shore if the kaiju got loose, and the waves they were generating would probably wash away anything and anyone on the waterfront.

But they didn't have time to think about that, or anything else but the mass of leathery flesh and stinging barbs and sizzling Blue in front of it as it flailed at them and they pounded at it, trying to stay between it and the shore. First, Yancy's cannon failed, blasting pain through their right arm and through their heads, and Grindylow was trying to writhe free, and they couldn't let him, not this close. As unbalanced as they were, they knew Hydra and Prophet were close - Raleigh's cannon charged, but he hesitated. If they missed, they might hit one of the others.

They rolled like a barrel over and over each other, their left arm burning and throbbing from the energy they couldn't release blind, unable to see in the mud and Blue that was churned up around them - then they were on top of it, and Raleigh's hand was wedged into its flesh. _Yes. _Raleigh fired. The pulse burst out of him - one, two - deep, then deeper into the kaiju's torso - it roared, it writhed, and then -

Silence. Stillness. Water sloshed around them, sharp-edged legs floated as they dug their knees in trying to hold it down.

But no more resistance. No more straining, rubbery muscles and slashing blows. They blinked at the display. No signature.

The comm sputtered and buzzed. Yancy fumbled at it. Part of their neck felt raw and exposed; they must have taken a close hit. Hydraulics were leaking, but they still had range of motion.

Could they get up? Was it definitely dead?

Yancy planted his damaged hand in the mud, hissing at the pain, but they managed to get their legs back under them and got to their feet, finding themselves only knee deep anymore. An ugly mass of slimy flesh and mud and Kaiju Blue floated at their feet. Grindylow, Category II. Dead.

Yancy turned, blinking sweat from his eyes and looking Raleigh up and down. _You okay? _"You okay?"

_Yeah, I'm fine. _"Fine. You?"

_I'm good. _"I'm good." Both of their hearts started to slow, seeming to be beating in complete unison. Raleigh stared at the engagement clock on the display. Nine hours since initiating handshake. Still at one hundred percent. _Holy shit. _

They'd never gone this long even in the simulator. Raleigh was having trouble figuring out where he ended and Yancy began.

They needed to get radio contact back. Hydra and Prophet were coming through the harbor towards them, and Matador was coming down the sand on the shore. But the voice comm and radio were completely dead. Frustrated, Yancy toggled up the keyboard and sent a written message.

_GIPSY DANGER: Lit it up at close range. Confirm no signature? _

_LOCCENT: No signature, kaiju declared destroyed at 1755 hours. What's the status of your drop gear?_

Raleigh ran the diagnostics and grimaced. They'd taken some severe damage on the outer hull, especially around the shoulders and back.

_GIPSY DANGER: Gear looks compromised. _

_LOCCENT: Can you exit through the escape hatch?_

_GIPSY DANGER: I think so. Hatch appears to be functioning._

_LOCCENT: Power down and exit. We'll have a spotter pick you up. Good work, Gipsy._

Funny. Last time, he'd felt buzzed. All shock and exhilaration and confusion. Now he felt... numb, like the sudden silence in the pod was tangible and he was sinking into it. Sleeping for a few years wouldn't be bad either.

_We need to power down. "_We need to power down," Yancy murmured, sounding as wrung out as Raleigh felt.

_Right. _"Right." They didn't need to think about synching their sides for the shutdown steps. They were completely synched. Hitting every button and switch simultaneously came without either of them needing to glance in the other direction, and it occurred to them before they hit the command to deactivate the handshake... this might hurt.

But they had to shut down and get back to base and take stock. So they braced themselves and deactivated the handshake.

"Deactivating handshake. Releasing harness. Unlocking motion rig," said the pod calmly. The floor rose up to lock around their feet again, making Raleigh's head swim as the drift drained away and -

_Yance..._

He was still afloat, but alone now, and even more disoriented. He could still feel Yance, but like a fading image in his mind, and he didn't want his brother to go yet. He stumbled dizzily out of the rig, but Yancy had moved faster, and they connected, in a clumsy pseudo-hug around their bulky armor. That was better, so much better.

_No one's hurt this time,_ one of them thought. They both laughed wearily, and they could move now. It was okay.

_You as dizzy as me? _Rhetorical question. They'd have to be careful not to fall off Gipsy's battered shoulder.

Helmets and gear had to stay on, though it was cumbersome to climb in, but so close to a kaiju carcass, no point in taking risks. _Bet it stinks out here too. _But while the comm itself was transmitted through Gipsy - and as a result, down for the suits as well as in the conn-pod - sound came through the external pickups quite well.

There was noise outside, more than just the sea wind blowing up on top of Gipsy. Horns. Ships? Even... people?

Wow, they were really close to shore. Only a few hundred meters before this eight-legged freak would have made landfall, and there were people everywhere! What were they all doing here - their arms were in the air. Cheering?

Choppers were buzzing around, media and military and civilian. Strangest of all was the enormous ship, some kind of big, bulky ferry or cheap transport, perched on the low, sloping sand dunes next to Matador Fury, whose drop gear was getting hooked up to the jump hawks.

A Blackhawk was hovering down to them now. "Gipsy Danger, can you guys hear me?" Yancy waved sluggishly in acknowledgement. "Stay right there, we're lowering a double rig for you."

A double rig. Good, then they wouldn't have to go separately. They'd practiced post-combat pickup so many times, so many different ways, but even after long hauls in the simulator, they'd never been so tired or banged up.

The Blackhawk had Hydra Corinthian's emblem on its side, and as the rig reached the chopper's doors, they found two other white-suited pilots in the cabin. "Hey," breathed a sweaty, reddish-haired girl through her helmet comm. "Hey, guys!" The darker-haired, darker-skinned girl up against her just waved wearily.

"Steffie! Kennedy!" Hugging really was next to impossible in their armor; they all just sort of collapsed in a heap with loud clunks.

"Gipsy Danger pilots secured, we're ascending." One of the cockpit crew climbed back to them. "Rangers, just so you know, we're going back to Panama. It's a lot closer."

Raleigh and Yancy blinked. "Oh. Okay."

Kennedy patted them, looking as exhausted as them. "Come on. We'll show you our hospitality."

"Our crews?" Yancy asked.

"Your strike force is Whiskey, right? I'm pretty sure they're all still deployed, but I'll get a status for you." The unfamiliar officer grinned at them. "So far, folks, this is looking like a record low death toll for an incident. The whole Western Hemisphere is celebrating."

_This is what it means to be heroes. _Neither of them could quite remember who'd told them that before. But this time around, apparently being heroes meant getting manhandled out of their battle armor on the three-hour flight to the nearest Shatterdome, and constantly scolded because they kept falling asleep.

* * *

><p><em>Strike Troop Command PAVE Hawk Whiskey Gamma…<em>

"Drop Team Pisco, what's the condition our jockeys?" Brandon demanded from the cockpit of his own chopper.

"_You got authorization for information, pilot?_"

Great. Just the time for inter-department spats. "We're Strike Trooper Team Whiskey Gamma under the command of Brandon Pines, whose first job is ensuring the welfare of our Rangers, so give me something here!"

"_Sorry 'bout that. Yes, we've got Rangers Becket, Lanphier and LaRue, taking all four back to Panama. Medics report they're stable, no major injuries. We'll get them a full workup as soon as we land in Panama City Dome_."

"I need someone reporting to Marshall Ramirez and LOCCENT back at LA. Their crew needs to know they're all right."

Whoever he had in the chopper's cockpit bearing the four pilots away from the scene finally seemed to get this just wasn't inter-departmental meddling. "_They're all in good condition. Very tired, looks like some drift shock going on, but they're mostly awake and talking. Hang on… Marshall Quijano says that invitation for a closer port of harbor extends to all the strike troops. Come back to Panama for repairs and some rest_."

Finally. "Copy that, Pisco. We'll ask for clearance when we're done out here."

The rule was that someone known and trusted had to be able to say he had eyes on the Rangers. Tendo wouldn't unleash the phone/text/email/Twitter/Facebook/TUMBLR tree before that. So someone from Team Gipsy or one of their trusted colleagues had to get a look at their crews in medical and make sure they were being told the real deal.

"No report until you've got eyes on the guys!" Tendo insisted. "I won't be party to panicking our people _or _giving 'em a false sense of security. Somebody tell me you're _looking _at 'em!"

So when Whiskey Alpha got the job of ferrying some injured personnel down to the Panama Dome, Brandon gladly suggested that Antwan Ferrier go with them. "Go on, man, you're officially a PC for all the strike crews, and Alpha's PC's got a concussion. Take 'em down to Panama, and while you're in medical, look in on our jockeys."

Antwan let himself be persuaded. Not to say that Brandon and Tendo and all who held the Beckets dear wouldn't trust the word of any of the Whiskey R&R crews, but _Capitaine_ Ferrier of S.S. Gipsy Danger had a certain seniority in the Ranger-sitting department.

There were sighs of relief on the comms from all up and down the Central American and Southern California coast when the report came in: "_This is PC Ferrier. I'm in Panama City infirmary. All our personnel are in good condition, and I have eyes on our Rangers - and Hydra and Prophet's Rangers too. They're all in good shape, minor injuries, resting comfortably_."

Even on the various docks where triage was in progress, there was a celebratory atmosphere, and the media caught on when the PPDC strike force personnel suddenly burst into cheers and applause.

* * *

><p><em>CNN Breaking News: "All through Guatemala and El Salvador tonight, we are partying like it's 2015! The coastal communities of Central America are feeling the same elation that the world shared the first time Brawler Yukon beat back the kaiju Karloff! Today marks a new milestone in the war against these monsters - the kaiju Grindylow was destroyed without ever making landfall! I'm going to our correspondent Trinity Wells in Puerto San Jose, Guatemala!"<em>

"_Thank you, Anderson! I'm here at the Plaza Manantial less than a mile from the waterfront where the people of this coastal town have gathered to celebrate! The PPDC and local military are urging the public to stay well inland while they continue clean-up, but we can still see a lot of the action! I'm having my cameraman turn around so you can see what I see - there! What a view, what a magnificent picture of our saviors! There on the upper beach stands Jaeger Matador Fury of Mexico, and next to him, the passenger ferry _Esperanza_. Matador _carried _that enormous ship in from the harbor after her engines failed with a kaiju closing in, and early reports say that as many as thirty-five hundred people were on board! Now further out in the harbor stands Jaeger Hydra Corinthian of the United States, a brand new Mark-4 just launched this year, who joined the battle to keep the kaiju from reaching shore. And directly to the southeast is America's Gipsy Danger, who fought hand-to-hand with that monster for over eight hours and finally brought him down!"_

_"Do we have any estimates on the death toll from this attack?"_

_"Unfortunately, this kaiju did attack a large number of commercial, military, and civilian ships at sea, so there is a death toll, but since he didn't manage to come ashore in any population centers, this may be one of the lowest death tolls from an attack so far. Even in the hospitals and triage sites, the atmosphere here is one of triumph and hope. You can see in the streets around me in Puerto San Jose, people are dancing, singing, waving American and Mexican flags, and shouting "Gracias," to the brave pilots and troops of the Jaeger Program!"_

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming This Weekend (Probably): _**_The aftermath of Grindylow is a lot easier on our heroes than the aftermath of Yamarashi! Jaeger pilots are rock stars - especially in the eyes of the people they save in_**_ Chapter Thirty: Esperanza!_**

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

** Original Character Guide **

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.

Andrés Alcazar and Daniel Moreno: Matador Fury's Rangers, Mexican nationals, age 39. Andrés was a historian and Daniel was a lawyer, both writing and working against institutional corruption before imprisoned for an unknown period. They were released along with other non-violent prisoners to attempt the Jaeger Academy, but have not yet been granted a pardon.

Alejandro (Alex) Quispe and Sunya Flores: Solar Prophet's Rangers, early 30s, Peruvians of mixed Quechan/Latino ancestry. A romantic couple who worked in the Peruvian railway industry before K-Day.

Benjamin (Ben) Gonzalez and Felipe Jara: Diablo Intercept's Rangers, mid-30s, Chilean, worked together on a submarine in the Chilean Navy before K-Day.

Antwan Ferrier: Gipsy Danger Personnel Coordinator, directs Whiskey Gamma, a team of Strike Troopers. Age 39, Jamaican national.

Brandon Pines: Support chopper pilot for team Whiskey Gamma, one of Gipsy Danger's four strike trooper teams, early 30s from Monterey, CA, transferred from the US Air Force.

Nicola Harris: Rescue/recovery EMT with Whiskey Gamma, age 21 from San Diego, CA, daughter of Brady Harris's cousin and a Guatemalan immigrant.

Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, late 20s, African-American from Atlanta, Georgia, attended academy with Beckets and his sister, Chloe, who is now in K-Watch.


	30. Esperanza

_**Author's Notes:**__ Thank you all for the wonderful reviews and encouragement during this life transition! So glad you're still enjoying the story, and please keep the feedback coming!_

_**Cameo Alert:**__ By the way, this chapter and last chapter had a cameo from another fandom. Anybody spot it?_

**Chapter Thirty: Esperanza**

_Panama City Shatterdome, May 21, 2018…_

Post-Grindylow recovery beat the hell out of post-Yamarashi. In some respects, it wound up being exactly the same: infirmary beds shoved together and the beep of instruments, the smell of antiseptic, and being poked and prodded by medics. But Raleigh wasn't in crippling pain or half-crazed with Yancy's vicarious terror this time, and that made everything easier.

They were incredibly tired and sore, but grinned at each other and at Kennedy and Steph through the whole process. It was a little odd, getting de-suited and checked out by strange crews instead of their own, but they both felt giddy to realize they were here with their classmates. They'd run together, and brought a kaiju down: Kennedy, Stephanie, Raleigh, and Yancy of Class 2016-B in their Jaegers. Solar Prophet's pilots, Alex and Sunya, were in their thirties, and fell right into the role of shepherding the youngsters around.

Nobody had any injuries deemed severe, so they all got to luxuriate in the actual showers and scrub grime and blood and sweat off unassisted before the full medical assessment. That was fantastic.

Body modesty was pretty well gone for Rangers before they ever launched, and they all sat in open hospital scrubs, comparing new and old battle scars as the medics moved around them.

Kennedy and Steph had matching, perfect circles the size of a guy's hand on their chests from the discharge of the pressure cannon. "It's really a last resort kind of thing, but in directed force, it's the most powerful non-incendiary that Munitions Engineering has managed to green-light. We scar and bruise every time we fire it, but it's worth it."

"That really was the money shot of that fight," said a nurse, gently cleaning and dabbing ointment on the raw burns. "All you could see was this ripple in the air, then the bastard just back-flipped mid-jump."

"We get questions every time we wear low-cut tops, but what the hell," Steffie winked at Raleigh and Yancy. "Still worth it."

Raleigh and Yancy had faint, traced webbing of burns old and new on both of their wrists and lower arms from the plasma cannons, like a faded half-sleeve tattoo. Yamarashi had left a deep set of streaks on their right knees, and lighter ones on their torsos from when they'd grappled with him.

Grindylow had put matching sets on both pairs of Rangers: lighter circuitry burns where his sharp-edged leg-teeth had swiped across their Jaegers' bodies, but deeper areas where he'd gouged and slashed. Some were faint enough that they'd fade completely. Others would last forever.

Despite being the longest-experienced veteran fighters of the group, Alex and Sunya had the fewest suit burns out of them all, ironically. Vaulimi had barely managed to strike any blows at them, but they didn't talk about it, and none of their fellow Rangers could bring themselves to ask.

They had a few individual injuries too. Yancy had some non-drivesuit burns from where his cannon controls had shorted out, and Steffie was bruised down to the shoulder blade where Grindylow had taken out Hydra's right-hand jets. Raleigh had pulled abdominal muscles from getting dragged, and Kennedy had straining to her diaphragm.

Panama Shatterdome's medics had the post-combat Ranger care protocol a little more refined than LA had after Yamarashi; there were already three sets of beds pulled together. Nobody was majorly injured or traumatized this time, but none of the pairs were going to take kindly to being separated.

Raleigh and Yancy leaned on each other without shame whenever they didn't have to sit or stand up for examination, arms around each other's shoulders. Kennedy and Stephanie were even closer, indulging in kisses and caresses that made Raleigh and Yancy grin at each other. The girls hadn't been much for PDA at the Academy, but scuttlebutt had it that all the romantic pilots started it up after combat. Alex and Sunya were also an item, and they certainly weren't hiding it either.

Even with a mostly-clean bill of health, they had to spend the night in the infirmary, but none of them complained. They had beds to sleep in and could stay together, and they were all so tired that that was all any of them could ask for.

Raleigh dropped off as fast as the others did, but woke some time that night to the sounds of people arriving. Yancy was draped over him again, his head on Raleigh's chest, so Raleigh couldn't move much. It didn't matter; he was too comfortable to want to.

There were familiar faces in Panama City's Shatterdome now; about a dozen of Gipsy's strike troopers among the other personnel getting checked over by the medics. Raleigh spotted Antwan near the infirmary door, talking into his headset. The Jamaican grinned when he saw Raleigh awake and ambled over. "How you feeling, man?"

"Pretty good. A lot better than last time," he chuckled, careful not to jostle Yancy. "How about the rest of our people? Everyone okay?"

Antwan nodded. "A few bumps and bruises, some stitches. Hien Nguyen got a concussion when her chopper had to make a rapid ascent, but she's fine." He nodded to one of the beds, where Raleigh could see Whiskey Alpha's personnel coordinator talking to one of Hydra's crew. She waved cheerfully and gave him a thumbs-up. "I just put the word out to LA that I had eyes on the four of you so Tendo can start up the text tree."

"Thanks. What's the word on Gipsy? I think she's going to need some serious TLC from Engineering."

"Yeah, she will. They were still assessing her and Hydra when it got dark. Matador got off the ground just in time for them to make it back to LA; Daniel and Andrés are up there." Antwan smirked. "The brass are having a big debate over whether protocol allows decoration for valor to a Jaeger who didn't actually engage the kaiju."

"They damn well better!" Raleigh hissed, making Antwan chuckle and Yancy shift and grunt in his sleep. He quieted down and rubbed his brother's shoulders until Yance relaxed, then finished, "They _carried _that ship to safety! Grindylow was going right for them! No chance they'd have made it!"

"We're with you, man, and so is the public. Mexico's big shots can't figure out how to spin this, but Matador's getting no less love than you, Hydra, and Prophet. And Yankee and Diablo's crews now have South Pacific vacation resorts at their disposal for life."

"Now that's awesome. Did you - "

In the murmur of voices of the still-busy infirmary, someone suddenly cried out. Yancy jolted awake, and Raleigh realized it was the next pair of beds. Steffie lurched upright and began shaking Kennedy, who was starting to thrash in her sleep. "Kenna, hey! Wake up!"

"What - " Kennedy woke with a death grip on her bedmate's arms and looked around with wild eyes.

"You okay?" Raleigh exclaimed.

"Yeah..." She shivered in Steph's arms and looked embarrassed. "Yeah, sorry."

"Driftmare, sweet?" Antwan asked, going towards her.

"Something like that," murmured Steffie, stroking Kennedy's hair until she lay back down. He took the hint to leave off and went to check on the other crew members. Steph shot Yancy and Raleigh a wry look once Kennedy was asleep again. "Saw that comin'."

Yancy grimaced. "Did combat stress her out?" Out of all of their class of Rangers, Kennedy had always had the hardest time detaching from battle stress. It was one of the main reasons the girls had feared they wouldn't be deemed Ranger Ready.

Steph considered it, still running her fingers through Kennedy's hair, and decided she was okay talking about it to her fellow pilots and classmates. Alex and Sunya were still asleep. "Not exactly combat," she explained. "It's never exactly been combat. It's...water."

Raleigh blinked at his brother in confusion. Water? _Oh... OH!_ It hit them both at the same time: Kennedy LaRue was born in New Orleans. She'd been seven when Hurricane Katrina hit, then her family had moved to Seattle where she'd met Steffie. She'd mentioned that they were evacuated after the storm and the flooding, hinting that they'd been rescued, but never really went into it, and nobody had wanted to pry.

"We didn't realize," Yance said, apologetic. "Weren't..." he frowned to himself. "Weren't you guys on the _swim_ team too, though?"

Stephanie nodded, now proud. "Her idea, not mine. She wanted to get over it, and in a lot of ways, she has. Water skiing, surfing, scuba diving? No fear. By K-Day, she'd almost stopped having nightmares about drowning." She sighed, looking down at Kennedy. "But kaiju attacks aren't exactly water sports. Ships go down, we _have _to fight at sea... that stirs it up."

Raleigh stared, and felt a surge of renewed admiration for Kennedy LaRue. Plenty of recruits had come into the Academy with some level of PTSD - but most of it was kaiju or military combat. Raleigh remembered how scary the images out of Louisiana had been in 2005; Mom and Dad hadn't let him or his siblings see much of it. Hundreds of people had drowned... to have gone through that as a little kid and still have the strength to fight sea monsters...

_"You can't fight an act of God, like a hurricane,_" Dr. Lightcap liked to say. _"All you can do is get out of the way, but when you're in a Jaeger, you _can _fight a hurricane. You can kill it._"

Now that he thought about it, Kennedy always smiled when somebody trotted that line out. It was that same, semi-vengeful smile that so many of them had when they talked about killing kaiju. Tendo, Antwan, Cady, even Little Lea, letting themselves imagine, just for a minute, making the monsters pay.

Maybe kaiju weren't the only monster Kennedy LaRue was looking to get even with.

_We respected all our classmates, all our fellow Rangers before now, _he mused. _And all of them deserve some admiration for what they've done. _Kennedy had just added a few dozen stars in Raleigh Becket's mental book, for reasons that had nothing to do with the combat itself.

"She doesn't want it to be a thing in the media," Steph explained.

"We figured," he said, not even needing to glance at his brother before promising on both their behalf. "You know we won't. We're Rangers."

"Why do you think I told you? She won't mind." With that, Steffie yawned heavily, kissed Kennedy on the cheek, and curled up around her again.

Yancy sprawled back on their bed, looking thoughtful, and Raleigh seized the opportunity to use him as a pillow for a change. "Antwan told me the crews are all okay, no casualties," he murmured.

Yancy kissed the top of his head like he had after Yamarashi. "You did good, kiddo."

_"We _did good. All of us. Brass is talking bravery citation for Matador even without touching the kaiju. I'm all for it."

"Definitely. That was a big ship." Yance sighed, fingers running through Raleigh's hair. "I didn't know any of that about Kennedy. She should've gotten a bravery citation just for enlisting."

"No kidding. I can't imagine."

"Yeah. Every time I turn around, someone's putting our lives in perspective."

_Don't, Yance. _Raleigh didn't want him to get like that tonight, not after they'd bagged a second kill. It still boggled his mind after a year and a half of drifting that Yancy of all people had insecurities.

He felt his brother let it go without needing words. They were definitely still ghosting. _Don't worry about me, Rals. Not that tonight either. We're good. Everything's good. _Raleigh smiled and relished that awareness. People had still died. Maybe they always would when there was movement in the Breach, but today, the monster hadn't ever set foot on land. The Jaegers of five different countries had worked together and taken the bastard down, and none of them or their crews had been hurt. That was something to bask in.

So he did, feeling warm and safe up against his big brother's chest, listening to Yancy's calm breathing and heartbeat until he too drifted off.

* * *

><p><em>Los Angeles Shatterdome, May 22, 2018…<em>

Tendo and the rest of Team Gipsy were drafted into assisting Carolina Olivares with press inquiries for the glorious aftermath of Grindylow. (Tendo stubbornly referred to him/her/it as Octopussy whenever possible.)

This engagement had certainly been a winner for the tacticians who'd been pushing for expanding the team deployment, but on the other hand, it only multiplied the logistical nightmares that came afterwards. Up until now, a grand total of two Jaegers had ever been in actual contact with a kaiju in a single encounter. Multiple deployments, sure, but still, only two sets of Rangers in post-combat recovery, two strike forces scattered around the target region (sometimes a few other crews mustered if back-up had been needed for rescue/recovery/clean-up), two Jaegers who might have to go in for repairs and be replaced at their Domes while they were off duty.

This time? Six Jaegers and support crews from three different Shatterdomes had been involved. That was a _lot _of manpower that now had to get reorganized, a lot of Jaegers needing at least some repair, and a lot of coverage that had to be shuffled around the Shatterdomes - and a hell of a lot of press demands.

But Grindylow's attack had now officially been declared the lowest death toll since K-Day: less than three hundred. That was still a lot of mourning, a lot of property damage, a lot of disrupted shipping and shattered lives... _But god damn it, we're really starting to win!_ It was behind every pair of eyes, every smile, every springing step of every man and woman in the Shatterdome that Tendo passed, and it sang in his own head: _We're enduring this._

The PPDC personnel weren't the only ones tasting the victory; the media and the public were going absolutely nuts. It was Christmas in May. It was V-E Day in 2018 (as Raleigh Becket would be the first to say.)

Tendo, Cady, Brady, and Carolina - hey, that sounded like a song! - took part in the video conference with the other Dome commanders working out where the various repairs would take place and who would get transferred to what post until further notice.

"Tacit Ronin is still under repair in Anchorage," Dr. Schoenfeld warned. "We don't have that many nuclear specialists to take on all of these at once, and we've got two more Mark-4's under construction here."

"I don't think anyone's suggesting we dump five damaged mechs on your doorstep, Doctor," said Marshall Pentecost dryly. "Sao Paulo built Diablo and Prophet, although most of Prophet's damage is superficial. He and Yankee can be deployment ready in a matter of weeks."

"God forbid we need them that soon," someone muttered.

"Amen. Matador needs a little work on his hands from carrying that ferry, but we can take care of that here in Los Angeles," said Marshall Ramirez. "I think it would make political sense to keep Matador and Yankee Star stationed here."

"What about our American scrapper?" asked Admiral Yamamoto from Tokyo. "Gipsy Danger is certainly in rising demand after yesterday!"

"She's going to need some major work due to her scrappy tendencies," chuckled Schoenfeld. "You'll have to send her to one of the Assembly sites; I don't think any of the Dome crews alone can handle that much refitting."

"Sao Paulo built Diablo, but a large crew of our electrical engineers are currently in Anchorage," pointed out the South American Chief Engineer.

Schoenfeld nodded. "Yeah, we've been borrowing Brazil's entire R&D crew for the refit of Tacit and digitize the Mark-4's. You know, your devil's lash is a favorite for our electricians too. We can probably handle that and Prophet's repairs if you Brazilians want to take a stab at resurfacing Gipsy."

"We need senior Jaeger coverage in Lima until Gipsy or Diablo is cleared," Pentecost mused.

"Well, Romeo Blue hasn't departed yet, has he?" asked Marshall Gagnon with a wicked smile. "Why not have him stay there? The poor Gages have certainly earned some time in a warm climate, and I can keep Solar Prophet as senior in Anchorage for a while. They don't mind the cold so much."

Tendo just barely managed to keep from snickering, and Cady did snicker, but luckily Pentecost was too busy shooting death glares at the Australian and Schoenfeld to notice. "That will be acceptable."

Now Ramirez gave a suspiciously-timed sneeze, and Admiral Yamamoto was flat-out grinning. "You're a brave man for putting the Gages and the Beckets in the same Dome again," he said, blithely ignoring the Brit's glower. "Take Diablo back once the repairs are completed. Gonzalez and Jara are a little more disciplined, and that trio should be more than enough for South America."

"I'll do that. Until Gipsy or Diablo is cleared for action, I need one more." Pentecost raised his eyebrows at Panama's Marshall Quijano. "Amazon Delta?" She pursed her lips; Tendo knew that Amazon's status as a four-country-funded ship meant that a lot of attention (and money) was always turned towards the base where she was housed.

_But _Ecuador had been one of those four countries, as had Brazil, and they fell within Lima's zone of protection. The Chief Engineer from Sao Paulo was nodding too. "Then we keep Hydra once she is cleared for combat again," Quijano said.

"Done."

Tendo had a little trouble keeping his attention on the conference after that, already running his mind through all the work they now had to do. _Moving Day again, here we go!_

"We need the Rangers to put in an appearance or two in Guatemala and El Salvador," said Quijano. "Those people want to meet their saviors, and I'm certain LaRue and Lanphier will be all for it."

"So will the Beckets," Ramirez agreed. "I'm a little cautious about Alcazar and Moreno. They'll certainly be happy to do it, but protecting them is my concern."

"Surround them with support crew and keep them close to their fellow Rangers," said Pentecost with a grim smile. That startled Tendo, but not in a bad way. It was nice to see even Marshall Hardass looking for a fight when it came to protecting the pilots. "With that media presence, especially for the rescuers of the _Esperanza_, I doubt anyone would dare threaten them."

"Do we have a final count of how many people were on that bloody ship?" asked Marshall Ketteridge.

"At least twenty-eight hundred. She was officially carrying twenty-one hundred, but the manifest was not exactly up to standard. When she was stranded? Her operator and most of the senior crew were long gone on the functioning lifeboats even before the Jaegers saw her," Pentecost informed them. "Passengers were laborers, immigrants, standing room only, and some ran or swam for it as soon as they could. Estimates are around three thousand."

"God almighty," Ketteridge muttered. "Speaking of ways to circle the wagons around Matador, what about that public citation for bravery? All in favor of interpreting the regs as not requiring engagement with a kaiju?"

The motion passed unanimously. Tendo wanted to applaud.

As the crews began preparing for relocation, Marshall Ramirez expressed dismay when she saw Team Gipsy packing up the table map from the rec room. "That's not Shatterdome property?"

Tendo was _pretty _sure she was joking, but Andrés Alcazar announced, "No, alas, it goes where Raleigh Becket goes, along with all the rest of the World War II paraphernalia."

"Except the Optimus Primes; they're Caleb Mitchell's," Cady warned, carefully setting the Transformers in a row on a shelf.

Tendo rearranged them to the Hear/See/Speak No Evil pose, and added a note:

_We'll Miss You!  
>Love, Team Gipsy.<em>

"Awww!" Penny Jefferson bear-hugged him. "You Gipsy Hipsters are so sentimental!"

"You know you'll miss us, Yank. Give your jockeys a big smooch for me when they come back from their cruise," Tendo ordered. Yankee hadn't taken too many hits, but enough that her drop gear was suspect. As a result, she was getting a leisurely ride back to the US on an aircraft carrier, and her pilots were doing a victory tour with Diablo's Rangers in the South Pacific.

"Will do, and give your blond boys a kick in the ass for us when they're done partying in Guatemala." Penny shot a mournful look at the now-empty map table. "Where was that magazine? I gotta order one of those for us to keep here."

"Already in progress, Miss Jefferson," said Marshall Ramirez, to everyone's glee.

* * *

><p><em>Guatemala City, Guatemala, May 24, 2018…<em>

_"This is Trinity Wells, reporting live from Guatemala City, as the 'Victory Tour' of four pairs of triumphant Jaeger pilots is getting under way with hemisphere-wide celebrations! This is certainly one of the greatest events ever to take place in this historic city. The streets surrounding Mateo Flores Stadium are packed with revelers, and people have been lining up for thirty-six hours for the chance to see their heroes in the flesh!"_

"This is kind of terrifying," Kennedy muttered as the teams walked down the stadium tunnel, hearing the roar outside.

"Tell me about it. We didn't do anything this big in LA," Yancy agreed. "How many people are out there?"

"Thirty thousand in the stadium," said Carolina, then tsked at the look on their faces. "Oh, what happened to my cool boys? Relax! This is a party - and I still say those jackets make you look like bikers."

Stephanie and Kennedy burst into giggles, and Raleigh heaved a loud sigh. "They're _bomber _jackets, for pilots!" They'd gone round and round on that argument; Carolina never quit harassing them about it, and Raleigh never quit taking the bait. Yancy winked at her.

"And they have a shiny new kill stamp! You two have joined the ranks of the elite," Tendo informed them.

But Yancy winced inwardly. Hydra, Prophet, and Matador's jackets were all stampless in the wake of Grindylow, and he wasn't sure if he was okay with that. _Can we at least put three thousand stick figures on Matador's, or maybe a really big ship? _

Then there was the matter of their two fellow Jaegers who _had _engaged the kaiju. Kennedy, Steph, Alex, and Sunya had brushed off the official decision to credit only Gipsy with the kill, but Yancy still wondered if they felt it was right either. Both Jaegers, especially Hydra, had dealt some powerful wounds to Grindylow, without which Gipsy might not have managed to take the bastard down.

Daniel and Andrés seemed to catch on to what he was thinking, and had pointed out gently, "But you were the ones who _killed _him. It's not an insult to the rest of us, and we know that. We did our jobs, but the one who strikes the final blows is the one who takes the credit for statistics' sake. Matador still is recorded as having no combat. Hydra and Prophet are now tested Jaegers, and the public knows the role everyone played."

Raleigh was too busy being giddy over this elite status as a multi-kill team, and Yancy was trying his hardest not to voice or show his reservations. No need to rain on his brother's parade - _but I better get the hell over it before our next drift. _Luckily, they were on leave while Gipsy was getting her refit in Sao Paulo's Assembly Facility, and it would probably be a few weeks before they were back in the simulator. Plenty of time for Yancy to come to terms with official point awards.

They processed out in pairs to stand on a stage, above which hung the flags of their respective countries and the emblems and images of their Jaegers. It made Yancy think of the Olympics. _We go last, does that mean we got the gold medal? _

"_Del Republico de Peru, los pilotos del Jaeger Profeta Solor: Alejandro Quispe y Sunya Flores_!" Alex and Sunya marched out of the tunnel to a collective roar of welcome.

_"De los Estados Unidos de America, las pilotas del Jaeger Hydra Corinthian: Stephanie Lanphier y Kennedy LaRue!_" Steph and Kennedy grinned over their shoulders at Yancy and Raleigh before parading into the eyes of their adoring fans.

The roar for Hydra had a distinctly higher pitch. "They are the dream of little girls everywhere," murmured Andrés with a fond smile.

Raleigh frowned thoughtfully. "They're not the only all-female team, though."

"No, but why should there be only one? That would be quite a burden." Yancy detected some melancholy in his voice, and wondered who Andrés was thinking about.

Raleigh noticed too, and said quickly, "Well, you guys are the closest to your home turf! Definitely the local favorite!"

"_De los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, los pilotos del Jaeger Matador Furio: Andrés Alcazar y Daniel Moreno_!" The older men gave less reserved smiles and went out to receive the crowd's praise. The roar was definitely the loudest yet, and Yancy and Raleigh were both very gratified by that.

"All right, Becket boys, you're up!" Tendo and Carolina made a big show of dusting their jackets off and looking them up and down.

"_Smile_, Yancy," Carolina murmured in his ear. He grinned sheepishly. "You deserve all this and more."

He kissed her quickly on the cheek and whispered, "_Gracias, Abuela_."

And then... _"De los Estados Unidos de America, los pilotos del Jaeger Gipsy Danger: Yancy y Raleigh Becket!_"

And Yancy and Raleigh went through the tunnel into a solid wall of light and sound and color. It was like a driftspace made up entirely of fireworks and flower petals and faces, faces everywhere, all different colors and ages, all with the same expression of pure joy, delight to _see _them, voices blending and mingling into a collective roar of jubilation. And hands, hands clapping, fists pumping, arms outstretched, waving.

His hand found Raleigh's, and they raised their joined fist in greeting to the throngs, but he knew that it had a double-purpose of serving as an anchor in this chaos.

Gradually, they reoriented themselves, managing at least to get their bearings in the chaos, and went to stand under their flag and the projected image of Gipsy next to Andrés and Daniel. Yancy ran his eyes over some of the signs being waved around in the packed stadium.

_Gracias! _

_Viva la Programma de Jaegers!_

_God bless the Rangers! _

A massive group of young kids, probably a school group, was down low in the stands with a long banner that Yancy decided was his favorite:

_Jaeger Cazador Hunter Chasseur Lieren Okhotnik Sikari Sanyangkkun Hanta Kirehe Mangangaso_

"Psst." He nudged Raleigh, and at first wasn't going to point, but then decided the kids would appreciate it. They did, and went wild, jumping up and down and shrieking when they realized the Beckets were looking at them.

"Aw, that's awesome," Raleigh shouted in his ear over the noise, and waved directly at the children.

Yancy and Raleigh had already received their citation for bravery, but when the brass had proposed using this venue as the forum for the other one they'd chosen to award, all of the other pilots had been very much on board. Secretary General Krieger had come to make the presentation, and ordered the Beckets to be the ones to give the medals. (Not that it was necessary to order them - all he would've had to do was drop a hint, and Yancy and Raleigh would have jumped on it.)

The infield of the stadium was left clear so that, at the eight pilots' insistence, their support crews could join them in getting the public's recognition.

"As you know, ladies and gentlemen, it takes more than pilots to bring a Jaeger against a kaiju! Please welcome the brave men and women of the Jaeger support crews!" The crowds gladly rose and roared again. Rather than be stuffed into dress uniforms and jackets, the support staff had engaged in a minor mutiny (with their Rangers' endorsement) and the brass had caved to allow them to wear their various "team shirts" and home country paraphernalia. Now their entry onto the field made Yancy again think of the Olympics, like the Parade of Nations with everyone having their individual touch.

The strike troop teams had the most variation, since they were the ones who separated most often from the Jaegers. The media had already worked out the theme in their call signs, which had originated as a private joke among the Mark-1's and was now a rigid tradition:

Solar Prophet's crew was Pisco Uno through Quatro. Matador Fury's R&R teams were called Tequila; Hydra's were Cider Alpha through Delta. And, of course, Gipsy's were Whiskey Alpha, Whiskey Beta, Whiskey Gamma, and Whiskey Delta (and collectively nicknamed Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, to the irritation of the stuffier superiors).

The support staff of all four Jaegers came from all over the world, but the ones with family or origin in Central America got to show some special pride today - and got special love from the masses. At one point, a group of teenagers pointed wildly at the Whiskey Gamma crew and began waving at a familiar head of dark hair streaked with black and gold highlights: "NIK-KI! NIK-KI! NIK-KI!"

Nicola Harris gaped, and her teammates cheered and gleefully began encouraging her admirers, shoving her forward. "Far cry from what happened back home," Raleigh remarked, but he grinned and gave two thumbs up to crew and kids. "Her mom was Guatemalan. The press is jumping on that." Nikki actually looked a little shy and hid behind Antwan and Brandon as the announcements and introductions went on.

Then Secretary General Krieger took over the proceedings again, and informed the crowd and Rangers that a final company of guests had to be introduced. The four support crews were moved to the side to make way for another entry, and in came a steady stream of people. Clearly not VIPs, nor PPDC personnel... most were younger men and women, but some were families and elderly. Dark skin and hard hands. Yancy was never sure who made the connection first, but amid the murmurs from crowd and crews and media, he heard the word, floating in awestruck whispers:

_"Esperanza."_

_"__It's the people from the ship." _

_"__Los pasajeros de la Esperanza!"_

_Oh my god. _There were a couple hundred of them by the time they filled the remaining space on the infield, and Yancy knew that this was still only a fraction of those who had been on that ship. Even if its name wasn't being whispered from multiple mouths in the crowd, he would probably have figured it out based on the way they were looking up at the stage. None of these people noticed the crew of Gipsy Danger, Hydra Corinthian, or Solar Prophet. They had eyes only for Matador Fury. And they weren't wrong.

The stadium fell into reverent silence as Secretary General Krieger ordered Andrés and Daniel to step forward, and Raleigh and Yancy to join him. "Courage alone does not merit special praise in the Jaeger Program. Bravery is not an accolade, but an essential part of your role. However, even those who have already distinguished themselves above all others may still rise to new heights of valor. In recognition of your heroism, Andrés Alcazar and Daniel Moreno, in your rescue of the vessel _Esperanza_ and over three thousand souls, the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps is pleased to make this special citation for bravery."

In the year since Gipsy's launch, Yancy had shaken hands with the Presidents of the United States, Canada, Guatemala, and El Salvador. He'd met the Queen of England and a whole slew of celebrities, been on television with international media personalities.

Pinning these medals on his fellow pilots would definitely rank as one of the highest honors he'd ever had, and he knew without needing a drift that his brother felt the same.

Once the various presentations and announcements were made, the crews were all getting ready to depart, and the Rangers were supposed to go back out through the tunnel. But Raleigh shot a smirk at Yancy and caught Andrés and Daniel's eyes, then the other four pilots grinned too. And before anybody could stop them, they were all heading for the stage steps as if this had been the plan all along. It wasn't as if Krieger or any of the PR reps could claim otherwise!

On the grass of the infield, they weren't really conscious of the roars or the people in the stands anymore. They just moved together among that group of wide-eyed strangers who had actually been in Matador's hands. Andrés and Daniel were first in their admiration, but most had plenty to say to the other pilots too.

"Thank you."

_"Pensabamos que ibamos a morir."_

"God bless you, Rangers."

_"Gracias por toda, señores._"

"Did the kaiju bite you?" a little girl asked Yancy and Raleigh.

They laughed. "He tried, so we hit him."

"You hit him many times!" laughed one of the adults.

Krieger, despite being the biggest honcho at the event, seemed to be pleased by the Rangers' decision to expand the meet-and-greet, and didn't insist they stop for a while. They mingled with the _Esperanza's _passengers for a long time, getting handshakes and embraces and words of thanks that were so profuse, it was sometimes hard to keep their composure. They walked along the edges of the field catching flowers and stuffed animals thrown from the stands and signed some autographs.

_So this is what it means to be heroes, too._

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming next weekend: _**_The Rangers and their crews bask in the rock star life in Guatemala City, and our heroes (especially Raleigh) learn a few things about family, hope, and symbolism in __**Chapter Thirty-One: Albatross!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Spanish Translations** (The countries' names are the full formal national names, as in the Olympics.)

_Del Republico de Peru, los pilotos del Jaeger Profeta Solor: Alejandro Quispe y Sunya Flores_! = "From the Republic of Peru, the pilots of Jaeger Solar Prophet: Alejandro Quispe and Sunya Flores!"

_De los Estados Unidos de America, las pilotas del Jaeger Hydra Corinthian: Stephanie Lanphier y Kennedy LaRue!_ = "From the United States of America, the pilots of Jaeger Hydra Corinthian: Stephanie Lanphier and Kennedy LaRue!"

_De los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, los pilotos del Jaeger Matador Furio: Andrés Alcazar y Daniel Moreno_! = "From the United Mexican States, the pilots of Jaeger Matador Fury: Andres Alcazar and Daniel Moreno!"

_De los Estados Unidos de America, los pilotos del Jaeger Gipsy Danger: Yancy y Raleigh Becket! _= "From the United States of America, the pilots of Jaeger Gipsy Danger: Yancy and Raleigh Becket!"

Gracias, Abuela = "Thanks, Grandma"

_Viva la Programma de Jaegers!_ = "Long live the Jaeger Program!"

_Los pasajeros de la Esperanza! = "_The passengers of the Esperanza!"

_Pensabamos que ibamos a morir._ = "We thought we were going to die."

__Gracias por toda, señores_ = _"Thank you for everything, sirs."

**Original Character Guide **

Andrés Alcazar and Daniel Moreno: Matador Fury's Rangers, Mexican nationals, age 39. Andrés was a historian and Daniel was a lawyer, both writing and working against institutional corruption before imprisoned for an unknown period. They were released along with other non-violent prisoners to attempt the Jaeger Academy, but have not yet been granted a pardon.

Alejandro (Alex) Quispe and Sunya Flores: Solar Prophet's Rangers, early 30s, Peruvians of mixed Quechan/Latino ancestry. A romantic couple who worked in the Peruvian railway industry before K-Day.

Benjamin (Ben) Gonzalez and Felipe Jara: Diablo Intercept's Rangers, mid-30s, Chilean, worked together on a submarine in the Chilean Navy before K-Day.

Antwan Ferrier: Gipsy Danger Personnel Coordinator, directs Whiskey Gamma, a team of Strike Troopers. Age 39, Jamaican national.

Hien Nguyen: Gipsy Danger strike troop personnel coordinator, directs Whiskey Alpha. Mid-20s, Vietnamese-American.

Nicola Harris: Rescue/recovery EMT with Whiskey Gamma, age 21 from San Diego, CA, daughter of Brady Harris's cousin and a Guatemalan immigrant.

Penelope (Penny) Jefferson: Yankee Star's support chief, formerly a superior officer of the Rangers when they were in the Marines.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative, Mexican-American, mid-60s, crew den mother.

Marshall Ana Ramirez: commanding officer of the Los Angeles Shatterdome, Mexican-American, mid-40s, formerly a US Army Lieutenant Colonel.

Marshall Vincent Gagnon: commanding officer of the Anchorage Shatterdome and Jaeger Academy, formerly Canadian Air Force, late 50s

Marshall Blake Ketteridge: commanding officer of the Sydney Shatterdome, mid-60s, formerly Royal Australian Air Force Vice Marshall

Admiral Daichi Yamamoto: commanding officer of the Tokyo Shatterdome, late 50s, Japanese Navy officer


	31. Albatross

_**Author's Notes:**__ Many thanks to everyone for all the feedback and reviews! Please keep 'em coming! FYI, the title of this chapter and the metaphor that Kennedy gives Raleigh come from the short-lived-but-much-loved scifi series _Firefly_, and its big-screen sequel, _Serenity_. Also, there's a second-hand cameo for a major character in this chapter! Blink and you'll miss it! Who caught it?_

**Chapter Thirty-One: Albatross**

_Guatemala City, Guatemala, May 24, 2018…_

After the stadium gathering ended, Event Security bussed the Rangers and crews back to their swanky hotels in the nightclub and embassy district called _Zona Viva. _Yancy was ready to call it a night, but Raleigh wasn't. "Come _on, _Yance, it's _Zona Viva! _Live a little!"

"I'm _tiiired_!" Yancy mock-whined as the crews laughed.

They all compromised that the pilots and crews would have a celebratory drink at one of the many clubs that was open and waiting, and then everyone who wanted to "be spoilsports" could return to the hotels and crash.

Local Jaeger Flies swarmed the surrounding streets, but inside the clubs was mostly VIP access only, not that it meant the crews were lacking for attention. Raleigh ended up at the center of a small mob of actresses, pop singers, and officials' daughters for much of the night, which he didn't seem to mind at all. Yancy had plenty of dance partners, but their fawning got exhausting after awhile, and he stuck closer to the crew.

He didn't leave quite as early as he planned. The party was fun, there was all kinds of food and drinks, the music was terrific, and it was great being out with their fellow pilots and all the crews. They had reason to celebrate. He escaped the ruckus from time to time for the "VVIP" lounge (designated for PPDC personnel only tonight) in a loft up above the main dance floor and bar. It had a two-way mirror so the lounge occupants could observe and comment on the action below without being seen, which was pretty fun.

To Yancy's surprise, Nikki Harris was up there. "_Qué tál, Señorita Harris?_ I don't think I've ever seen you not dancing by choice." He managed not to ask why he hadn't seen her dancing with Raleigh at all. He had a feeling he knew.

She smiled and beckoned him to join her. "Can't the R&R crews get any R&R around here?"

"Ohh, that pun was Tendo-worthy." They both laughed, but he detected some glumness. Carefully, he asked, "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Just.. thinking a lot." She gave him a sly smile. "Don't worry, I'm not plotting to poison your brother for dancing with other girls." Yancy chuckled. He'd doubted this was a jealousy thing.

"Sounded like the general public has decided you're not a villain after all," he remarked. Wrong thing to say; Nikki winced. "Did I just stick my foot in my mouth?"

She waved him off, gazing distantly at the dancers below them. "Nah, not really." Glancing around to make sure they didn't have any eavesdroppers, she said, "You know my mother was from Guatemala?" Yancy nodded. "I've never been here. Never expected to come. Mama hated this city, the whole country, ran north with her brother and sister when she was seventeen. I'm surprised the press didn't make a big deal about her having been an illegal."

_Wow._ He hadn't known that, and was definitely surprised the Fox News jerks hadn't jumped on it. "Did she ever get legalized?"

Nikki nodded, studying the dregs of her drink. "The year before K-Day, when I was fifteen. Growing up, the thing we all were most afraid of was that she'd get picked up, sent back, and Papí and I'd never see her again. This place... the way she talked about it, it was hell. Now here I am. And... it really ain't that different from home. It's not terrible." She smiled wryly in the reddish club light. "Mama died last year, a few weeks before Yamarashi. I'm just... thinking a lot. Something like this makes you wonder things."

Yancy nodded. "I can understand that. You didn't have any siblings?"

"Not exactly. Papí was one of six, Mama was one of three, and the whole family lived right together, so it was me and about a dozen cousins. Three of us tried Academy, but I was the only one who made first cut, and it took two tries."

He grinned. "I've never forgotten you at Raleigh's Final Spar. Did I thank you then?"

She laughed more easily. "Nah, you don't need to. Big Brother had stuff on his mind. I'm the oldest cousin; you make me jealous of Raleigh sometimes!"

"It drives him nuts," Yancy replied. He gestured to Steph and Kennedy, who'd come staggering up the stairs and collapsed onto one of the couches. "They've each got an older sibling; they've yelled at me for pushing him around."

Alex Quispe came up a few moments later and ordered drinks for himself and Sunya, who was still downstairs, but turned and trotted up after her co-pilot just as the bartender finished mixing their order. Nikki watched the Solar Prophet Rangers with a still-thoughtful, but less-melancholy expression. "Okay, I've always wanted to ask: is it true drift partners can find each other blindfolded, or is that just the Gages?"

"Hah! I've heard that one. We haven't really consciously tried it... hang on." Yancy shut his eyes and concentrated, reaching towards Raleigh as if they were drifting. "This isn't exactly scientific method..." And if it didn't work, he'd just have to send a text rather than keep on talking to Nikki Harris by himself and igniting the gossip chain.

Nikki peered down through the two-way mirror at the crowd below, giggling. Raleigh didn't appear to suddenly get a mental vibe, though he did pull free of his throng of dance partners and make his way to the bar. But then he was muttering in Andrés and Daniel's ears, and they gestured to the stairs - and he looked right at the mirror as if he could see through it.

"Holy shit!" Nikki exclaimed.

Yancy eyed his brother through the glass, unsure if this really was eye/brain contact or just power of suggestion. "You think?"

Raleigh came into the lounge with Matador Fury's pilots in tow a few moments later, and only unsurprised to see Yancy at a table with Nikki. "I was wondering where you disappeared to," he told Yancy.

Nikki pointed at Yancy, wide-eyed. "He was trying to 'mind buzz' you! Did you feel it?"

"Huh! I dunno... maybe."

Now listening to the conversation, Kennedy and Steph were grinning. "We've tried that, but it doesn't seem to work. The Gages can definitely do it in a test setting... though you two are brothers. Maybe you really can do it."

"Those Chinese triplets can do it," said Sunya. "They came to Sao Paulo to help with pons development. You only have to call one of them, and all three look up."

"Now how come they don't have a Jaeger yet?" asked Antwan, coming over with drink refills for himself and Team Hydra. "I thought Silver Lion or Shaolin Rogue would be for them."

"They're Raleigh's age, but they're like the main pons trainers in Asia," Kennedy pointed out. "Or maybe they can't figure out which two should be the pilots."

"Haven't you heard?" Daniel grinned. "They're building a special Jaeger just for those triplets, with a three-way conn-pod."

Everyone started talking at once. "Whaaat?" demanded Tendo.

"Seriously?!" Raleigh exclaimed.

"Aw, bullshit," Steffie snorted.

"How would that even work?!" Yancy mused. "Instead of left-hemisphere-right-hemisphere... three dimensions? I'm not a pons neurologist, but I don't know if a brain could do that."

"He is pulling your legs," Andrés confirmed, cuffing his partner. Then he gave them all a shifty look. "At least I think he is."

"Who've we got on crews that's actually worked in Hong Kong?" Raleigh asked. "I bet they've met 'em."

Yancy yawned in unison with Daniel. "You kids start the private investigation. I think I'm calling it a night."

"I'll join you, Becket. I'm done!" said Antwan.

"Okay," said Raleigh, accepting Yancy's one-armed hug of farewell. "Fogeys and lightweights, go with Yancy. Young and able people, let's order another round!"

"Don't worry, we'll look after _hermanito,_" Alex told Yancy with a sly grin, getting a huff of annoyance from Raleigh.

"Behave yourself, kiddo. Night, everyone!"

* * *

><p>"People still think I need looking after?" Raleigh grumbled, dropping onto the couch next to Kennedy and Steffie. (The truth was, he was getting a little run-down, but damned if he was going to admit it yet.)<p>

"Of course not; they're just harassing you!"

Sunya chuckled. "We're not actually going to hover over your shoulder all night." But she did ruffle his hair.

"That gets old," he muttered to the girls.

"You need more alcohol," Steffie decided, and got up to order them all another round.

Kennedy flopped lazily against him. "That's the burden of being the youngest, bro." She fist-bumped him. "We got it a lot too. Still do."

"And it never bugs you?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes. Not much anymore." She accepted the drink Steffie brought her and took a long gulp before continuing, "When I was younger? Man, I _hated _my big brother and his friends sometimes. It was so condescending. He's five years older."

"Geez, and you're a girl. Yance can be a pain in the ass, but I bet you got it worse."

"My big sister wasn't much better," Steffie told him.

"So you just got over it? Or did they stop?"

"Mm… neither. Virgil - my brother - liked to boss me around, and when he wasn't bossing me, he was trying to baby me. Sometimes it was fun, but sometimes you just wanna scream, I'm not seven anymore!" Kennedy wrinkled her nose. "Steffie said she told you about Katrina?" Raleigh nodded. "Yeah. That didn't help. I'm still not really sure how much danger we were really in. My parents always said we were still safe, and Virgil did too, but the water was up to our second-floor balcony when the rescue boat came. After that, the first few years after we moved to Seattle, Virgil was even worse. He wouldn't let me out of his sight, wouldn't trust me to take care of myself - and I wasn't exactly a daredevil. God, the fit he threw when I enlisted."

Raleigh snorted. "Is he over it yet?"

"No," she said, so matter-of-factly that he was startled. "But I am. And... you know? When I stopped arguing with him, he finally... stopped trying. I know he still worries, but I can't do anything about that. But it doesn't bother me so much anymore when he fusses over me."

"How come? Distance?" That wasn't really a workable remedy for Raleigh and the crews, and he wouldn't want it to be with Yancy.

But Kennedy shook her head, then mused, "You and Yance are good cultured boys, right?"

"Huh?"

She giggled. "Haven't I heard you quoting _Firefly_?"

"Ohh, yeah, definitely, we're cultured. Shiny!" he added, for good measure.

"Remember _The Hero of Canton_?" Raleigh started humming it at once, and Steffie giggled and joined in. "It's what Mal tells Jayne at the end: It's not about you, it's about what _they _need."

That was... an interesting way to think about it. Raleigh contemplated the ceiling. "They need to fuss over someone?"

It turned out Tendo Choi and Cady Spencer were listening now. "Fuss over, adore, cherish, be proud of," said Tendo. "Call it what you want, kiddo. We did it to Lea Franklin too, remember?"

"Aww, you _adore_ me, my man?"

"You're just so cute sometimes!" Raleigh shot him the bird. "Emphasis on 'sometimes.'"

"The rest of the time, we wanna knock your head against the wall," Cady agreed.

Alex and Sunya were observing the conversation too. "Most Rangers will not have children," Sunya pointed out. Raleigh blinked at that, and she scoffed. "Well, we are all working above giant nuclear reactors, no? Maybe not these two," she conceded, gesturing to Kennedy and Steffie. "But the Mark-1, Mark-2, and Mark-3 Rangers, we have paternal instinct. It has to go somewhere."

Raleigh groaned. "I did not sign up for that."

"Neither did Little Lea. Them's the breaks, Baby Becket." Kennedy punched him on the arm. "Virgil still calls me his little albatross. Ya know? I'll let him baby me sometimes, if that's what he wants. The world's a big, scary, shitty place. All those people out there, we're symbols to them. We big bad Rangers need that for ourselves too, and so do our families. So do us a favor and let us baby you sometimes. Or at least Yancy, because it's so goddamn cute when he does it."

Sheepishly, Raleigh admitted, "I don't really mind it from him, not most of the time, anyway."

"He's a hell of a lot more restrained than Virgil," Steffie agreed. "Or Trisha - my big sister. That's probably why you two are so compatible; my sister and I would probably have blown up the pons."

"I know about you guys smacking him about the bar fight," Raleigh told them, grinning. "I meant to thank you and Devi and Suze."

Both girls both started to laugh. "We wondered if you'd see that in the drift! Yeah, that was the time he reminded me _most _of my brother. Never you mind!" Kennedy told their curious audience. "Confidential Ranger stuff!"

"We're Rangers!" protested Alex.

"Confidential Class 2016-B stuff," Steffie amended it, and everyone whined.

Nikki had just been observing the conversation until then, but now she put in, "Yancy and I were talking about family earlier, before he tried 'mind-buzzing' you. I got raised with a bunch of younger cousins. It can be hard, wanting to look out for 'em but also let 'em be their own person. Especially since K-Day."

Raleigh felt a pang at that. What did it say about him that he couldn't recall many times that he'd felt that way about Jazmine? Maybe it was their ages, the fact that they'd been so similar and spent all their lives as "Yancy's younger siblings", to the point where it seemed like they were mostly on equal footing.

He didn't remember Nikki coming to his rescue after the Final Spar, but he'd seen it in Yancy's memories in the drift. Maybe it wasn't just EMT instinct that had driven her.

A part of him wanted to fume, _I didn't sign up to be on a pedestal as some symbol of hope! _But on the other hand... Pentecost, the other Marshalls, the instructors at the Academy, they all reminded the Rangers and the personnel that they were symbols. Hope, courage, protection, the Jaeger program wasn't just about the literal fighting against kaiju.

Outside the Corps, a lot of people didn't understand. Raleigh loved the events like today, the attention from pretty girls, the pick of partners and the admiration... but sometimes it was a respite just to hang out with people from the Dome. They could understand as nobody else would. That was why he'd hooked up with Nikki sometimes instead of always picking up a Jaeger Fly. He could let his guard down with his own people, and they could with him.

The medics had given him and Yancy and the other Rangers the warning that between the nearness of nuclear reactors and all the powerful chemicals they were exposed to, fertility would probably be affected. It hadn't concerned either Becket much; that was such a remote future for guys their age.

But for couples like Alex and Sunya, or even Steph and Kennedy? The older techs and support crews who also worked around the nuclear Jaegers day in and day out? That had to be a more immediate concern, something they knew they had to sacrifice.

He eschewed the company of local celebrities and Jaeger Flies for the rest of the night and just hung out with his fellow Rangers and the crews. They talked philosophy and politics and all the big controversial stuff that would give the PR personnel heart attacks if any of them were caught on camera. They danced and sang karaoke and played bar games. A lot of them (including Raleigh) got drunk. They were in trusted company, after all.

By the end of the night, Nikki invited him back to her room, and he almost took her up on it. But then he decided, "Actually, I better check in with Yance."

No complications. Nikki smiled and whispered in his ear, "Remember when I flipped out at you in April? It wasn't just the Jaeger I was worried about."

They strolled back to the hotel arm-in-arm, no longer concerned with the paparazzi despite knowing this would spawn a new chapter in their media love story. "He remembered you when you came back in 2017, from the Final Spar."

"He told me earlier. I _envy_ you, Spunky." He looked at her in surprise as they got into the mirrored elevator, and she leaned against the wall, punching their respective floor numbers. "After Yamarashi, yeah, but even back at your first cut. It's so obvious what you mean to him."

After she'd gone and he was alone in the elevator riding up to the presidential floor, he absently scanned through his email on his phone and saw a new one from Suze Hassan. _I was thinking about you and Yancy today. One of Lucky's crew has a son, and Devi is teaching him chess. She misses having you around to fuss over._

He laughed to himself. She had also forwarded him an Internet meme about the fight with Grindylow. It was a picture of Matador Fury with _Esperanza _in his hands, and the caption: _A more prophetic name was never given to a ship. _

Esperanza meant hope.

"If you stay with this Program, you're not merely officers, nor merely fighters," Marshall Pentecost had told the Rangers before Gipsy launched. "You are symbols, not just of protection but of hope. Be prepared to live up to that."

That was why they smiled and nodded through the five thousandth repetition of praise and gratitude, even though they might be tired and bored and impatient to get away from the cameras, because for the person talking to them, it wasn't the five thousandth time. That was why they signed autographs until their hands cramped up and tried not to scoff at the press questions. It was why they managed not to run away or break down in tears when they met someone who'd lost loved ones to the kaiju.

"They need you," Carolina always said. "They need someone to believe in."

Raleigh Becket felt like he'd already failed to live up to some things that he'd needed to be, like the kind of son his dad would've wanted to stay for or that his mother would've quit smoking for, the kind of brother that his sister needed. He'd been astonished to find that Yancy felt the same way after they drifted.

Now they were both trying to live up to what the rest of humanity needed from the Rangers: strong, stalwart defenders. No doubts, not visible anyway.

And he knew Yancy was trying to live up to being the big brother that Raleigh believed him to be. Raleigh was desperate to be the partner and brother that Yancy wanted too.

In their room, he found his brother sound asleep, as expected, and felt a rush of warmth. _Okay. I guess if you and the others need me to be the kid, be your albatross, I can try to do that too. It's probably not too much to ask. _

He kissed the top of Yancy's head and went to sleep smiling.

**_To be continued..._**

_**Coming Next Weekend: **__ Our heroes finish their victory tour and transfer to the Lima Shatterdome while Gipsy Danger gets repaired... but the next movement in the Breach brings a nasty alignment of bad luck and bad judgment in which Raleigh bites off way more than he can chew, and Yancy and Team Gipsy struggle to contain the fallout in __**Chapter Thirty-Two: Pushing the Envelope!**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Spanish Translations****:**

_Qué tál_ = What's up?

_Hermanito_ = Little brother

**Original Character Guide **

Andrés Alcazar and Daniel Moreno: Matador Fury's Rangers, Mexican nationals, age 39. Andrés was a historian and Daniel was a lawyer, both writing and working against institutional corruption before being imprisoned for an unknown period. They were released along with other non-violent prisoners to attempt the Jaeger Academy, but have not yet been granted a pardon.

Alejandro (Alex) Quispe and Sunya Flores: Solar Prophet's Rangers, early 30s, Peruvians of mixed Quechan/Latino ancestry. A romantic couple who worked in the Peruvian railway industry before K-Day.

Nicola Harris: Rescue/recovery EMT with Whiskey Gamma, age 21 from San Diego, CA, daughter of Brady Harris's cousin and a Guatemalan immigrant. Occasionally has a casual hook-up with Raleigh.

Antwan Ferrier: Gipsy Danger Personnel Coordinator, directs Whiskey Gamma, a team of Strike Troopers. Age 39, Jamaican national.

Cady Spencer: Gipsy Danger LOCCENT Technician (along with Tendo Choi), Filipino-American, age 27 from Portland, Oregon.

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Rangers, pilots of Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark-3. First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 27 and 25, graduated Jaeger Academy in the same class as the Beckets.


	32. Pushing the Envelope

_**Author's Notes:**__ Just a reminder, details about my original characters (human and Jaeger) can be found on my Tumblr, 3Fluffies, which is linked in my profile. This chapter's first segment draws from a side-story that Travis Beacham wrote about Nova Hyperion. I expanded on the narrative a little bit, but cut it for length - if anyone's interested, perhaps I can be persuaded to post it as a ficlet on Tumblr!_

_**Canon Note:**__ Lima's Chief Medic is actually not an original character - she's a canon character that I borrowed from a television show. Anyone recognize her? (Here's a hint: she was unmarried and went by a nickname in her original canon, from which I've previously borrowed another character.)_

**Chapter Thirty-Two: Pushing the Envelope**

_June 2018…  
>Jaeger Program Tour, Central America…<em>

The Victory Tour (only so-called unofficially, since the officials tended to wince over comparisons between the Jaeger Program and The Hunger Games) traveled from Guatemala up through Mexico, and then back down to Panama. Mexico was publicly as celebratory and warm as the other stops, but behind the scenes, there was quite a bit of tension among the crews. Team Gipsy, Team Hydra, and Team Prophet stuck very close to Team Matador, smiles on all their faces but eyes constantly on the lookout for trouble.

"Nobody would dare mess with them," the more confident souls insisted. "Not after what they did for that ship, not with all of us right here."

Raleigh Becket and Team Hydra seemed to agree, but Tendo could tell that Yancy and the elder Rangers of Solar Prophet weren't about to take that for granted. And there was an awfully large police and military presence at the Mexican events, more so than any of the other countries.

Mexico was still fun. Many passengers on the _Esperanza_ had been from there, so between that and simple patriotic fervor at having their homegrown Rangers visiting, the general public lavished adoration on Andrés and Daniel. Matador's pilots in turn were gracious and happy to receive it. The Rangers and crews partied their way from Acapulco to Mexico City.

The public relations brass happily capitalized on the drama of the long battle. The blow from the "Hydra's breath" cannon didn't need much help to turn into a viral media sensation; it really was a spectacular shot. But as the post-engagement reports got put together with all the instrument readings, somebody got the bright idea of hiring some animators to reconstruct the dramatic underwater drag-and-chase that Gipsy had gone through.

The result really was an Indiana Jones-esque action sequence that inspired the crew to buy fedoras for Raleigh and Yancy. "Now we know what you can say when anyone fusses about your age," Christian Warner told Raleigh.

"_'It's not the years, it's the mileage_,'" Raleigh chorused with everyone in the vicinity. "I think I need that on a T-shirt."

He got it. Yancy picked "_I've nearly been incinerated, drowned, shot at, and chopped into fishbait_."

Soon everybody on Gipsy Danger's support crew had Indiana Jones quotes or paraphrases on their team shirts. All the reptile-phobic crew members had "_Snakes, why'd it have to be snakes_," and Nikki Harris got yet another fifteen minutes of fame with a money shot of her climbing onto Tendo's back, shrieking in terror when a local performer was showing off his pet anaconda.

Tendo had "_Not that Becket, the other Becket_," and was informed that he was giving Christian a run for the money as Team Gipsy's Punner-in-Chief.

Brandon Pines and the other chopper pilots had "_Fly, yes. Land, no_."

Diablo Intercept's crew prepared a playful "statement of protest" for the media, complaining that _they _should've been the ones to get the Indiana Jones comparisons since they were the ones with the whip.

"Remember what happened LAST time somebody stole Indy's whip!" Carolina threatened in response, getting a chorus of "oooooh!" from Team Gipsy.

Down in Panama City, Class 2016-B had another reunion, this time with former second-cut survivors Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald, who were now on Rio Sentry's Rescue/Recovery crew. "I told you we'd see you again!" Janet laughed, hugging the Beckets fiercely. "You were fantastic - here and in Los Angeles."

"These two were beside themselves," Rio Sentry's left-hand, Elida Morales, told them.

Rio Sentry's team was an interesting duo; the first time they met was during pre-screening _after _making the first cut. "The Academy's had a few who were only casual acquaintances or recently introduced, but so far Elida Morales and Nicho Conte are the only pair who never even had a conversation until after the first cut," Carolina told them.

Tendo knew he wasn't the only curious one, but he suspected that Elida and Nicho were constantly fielding those types of questions, so he politely held his peace (and gossiped behind their backs, because he wasn't _that _polite).

"She's American, but spent most of her life Central America," said one of the Rio Sentry support crew who'd been in Class 2017-A with them. "Parents were Peace Corps lifers, environmentalists, that kind of thing. He's Ngäbe from Costa Rica. When he started at Academy, Nicho didn't even talk a lot because his English wasn't great. Nice guy, great scores on the tests, picked up the Bushido like he'd been doing it all his life, but he was just still finding his feet. We all did the pre-drift testing and matching, they matched up with each other and a couple others - you know how the drill went."

"Yeah, I had three matches," Tendo confirmed. "Didn't crack eighty percent with any of 'em."

"That's standard for the majority," Rio's crew agreed. "I think maybe Elida's family spent some time around the Ngäbe populations in Panama, so they spent some time together, him teaching her his language and her helping him with English. Nobody really noticed anything, 'cause everybody was working on ways to synch up. They go in there - BOOM. Eighty-six percent, first try! It was crazy!"

"I remember," said Andrés, having been in the same class. "Sometimes people connect, and there is no explaining it. Or there is an explanation, but not to outsiders."

Nicho now spoke English more than well enough to chat and handle communicating with LOCCENT. His bond with Elida seemed just as strong as Raleigh and Yancy's, Tanisha and Caleb, or Andrés and Daniel's. To each other, they spoke a combination of English, Spanish, and a native language that Tendo assumed was Nicho's. There were nudges and raised eyebrows, people wondering if they were an item, but nobody on Team Rio would talk.

After Panama and a belated launch party for Rio Sentry, Team Gipsy and Team Hydra went back to LA briefly for the launch of Mammoth Apostle, America's second Mark-4. Raleigh and Yancy were tickled to discover that Marshall Ramirez had ordered another Jaeger-kaiju table map for the LA Shatterdome.

At that point, Tendo and most of the support staff headed down to set up shop in Lima for Gipsy's convalescence in the Sao Paulo Assembly Facility. Raleigh and Yancy, along with Team Hydra, got the special honor of being sent to the other side of the Pacific for the launch of Nova Hyperion.

Seeing the images of the two girls – formerly Olympics-level fencers – and the other pilots surrounded by press and admirers in Shanghai, Busan, and Nagasaki, Brandon Pines said with some envy. "Damn, Rangers have a good gig!"

Tendo smiled. "They should. None of them are ordinary people."

Crazier still, the day after Nova launched, China announced the upcoming launch of Crimson Typhoon, the Mark-4 that would be piloted by the Wei triplets... all three of them.

"Are you SHITTING me?!" was the general initial reaction.

Tendo got a Facebook message from Raleigh in Nagasaki that evening: _We were hanging out with the Tunaris when we saw China's press release. Gunnar says he can't decide whether he wants to kill those guys or build a temple to them._

Tendo wrote back, _Now we know what Doc Lightcap's "special project" was in Hong Kong for the past three years: a 3-way pons! _

From Yance: _Why the hell hasn't anyone built a temple to HER yet?!_

* * *

><p><em>August 30, 2018…<br>Lima Shatterdome…_

Lima's chief medic, Dr. Eleanor Faison, was a quiet, strictly-business American married to a genetics researcher who'd gone from working with fruit flies to studying kaiju. The rowdy crew of Team Gipsy weren't sure what to make of her, though she did pass the "map test," (meaning she smiled when she saw them putting it together in the "personnel lounge" off the mess hall).

After Team Gipsy settled into Lima Shatterdome, they started doing regular simulations. A few weeks in, Raleigh had a nagging headache that no amount of Ibuprofen or Excedrin seemed to halt. At first it was just annoying, then he woke up with a strange, familiar pressure in his skull.

It was familiar not because he'd experienced it, but because Yancy had. "Yance?" he muttered, thumping his brother's bunk.

"Mm? Rals? What's..." Maybe it was ghost drift, or just the fact that Raleigh wasn't already bouncing out the door that tipped him off. "Uh-oh."

Yancy got dressed in a rush and helped his brother fumble into his clothes, then ushered him down to the infirmary. "Whoa!" Trevin Gage did a one-eighty in the corridor as they passed. "You okay?"

"Not sure," Yancy told them, and kept Raleigh moving. Trevin trailed after them.

Yancy was irked with Dr. Faison when her first question was: "Hangover?"

"We don't drink after ten weeks," he told her curtly. "It's not a hangover. I've had Jaeger-head, but Raleigh hasn't."

"Ah. Have a seat, Ranger. Let's dim the lights." She was gentle with him from that point on, pulling up his and Yancy's charts on her tablet and keeping her voice low. Bruce Gage slipped into the infirmary within a few minutes and stood silently at Trevin's side, just keeping watch. "How bad is it?"

Raleigh hissed when she looked into his eyes, but wasn't completely flattened - yet. "Not too bad so far. Not as bad as I remember Yance being, but there's this pressure... that's how it started, like everything's echoing and pushing out of my head."

"Okay. Before it gets any worse, let's get you through the scanners and rule out any other causes."

Yancy watched and gnawed on one of his knuckles until it bled. "It's not hitting him as fast as it did me," he muttered.

"The onset with you was really fast," mused Bruce. "You'd just fired Gipsy's plasma for the first time, then, right? That might've aggravated it. It was a couple of hours for Vic and Gunnar and the others who got it. You getting any of it now?"

"Maybe a little. It does feel the same... _sort_ of pain, if that makes any sense." Yancy wasn't worried about himself, though his phantom drift with his brother had only grown in strength since his first round with Jaeger-head. He could deal with drift pain... he was more worried about the agony Rals was about to go through.

Somebody tipped off Reynaldo and Isabel Khouri, and soon Amazon Delta's pilots had joined them, as silent support along with more and more Team Gipsy personnel. "You ever had it?" Nikki Harris asked them.

They shook their heads. "We have migraines," said Rey. "Especially Isabel. Hers are very bad, but..."

_But Jaeger-head is worse, _Yancy finished mentally. Carolina arrived and made him stop chewing his knuckle. He paced instead.

"I know it's small consolation, but better Jaeger-head than something dangerous," Tendo pointed out. "You guys are all at high risk for bleeds, aneurysms, the works."

It wasn't much, no. But there was some relief to be had, seeing Dr. Faison eliminating strokes and hemorrhages from the possible diagnosis list. After an hour, she let Yancy join Raleigh in the darkened scanner room while she finished reviewing the results. "It's not too bad," he murmured, leaning against Yancy.

"But it's getting worse?"

"...Yeah."

The doctor came very quietly back in, and Yancy noticed with a rush of gratitude that she'd turned down the lights in the adjoining room so it didn't bother Raleigh when she opened the door. "It's definitely Jaeger-head," she told them softly. "There's a signature that Neurology has identified in the MEG scans; it's neuronal, vascular attack similar to a migraine, just stronger. Apart from that, you've got a very healthy brain. We'll get you into the dark room and some painkillers - "

- The alert sirens went off. Phantom pain lanced through Yancy's head, and Raleigh let out a strangled yell, clutching his hands over his ears. The scanner room wasn't sound proof, and he could hear the explosive curses and shouts from outside as people ran for stations.

_ATTENTION. ATTENTION. Movement in the Breach. Yellow Alert. _

"Aw, shit, PERFECT timing, motherfuckers!" someone bellowed.

"Christ. Yancy, take him to the - "

" - No!" Raleigh blurted, trying to get to his feet. "I can't, not now!"

Yancy exchanged a baffled look with Faison. "What?"

Cringing even in the dim light of this room and the noise muffled by the closed door, Raleigh nonetheless insisted, "We're on alert. I can't be grounded! There's a treatment now for attacks, right? Give me that."

"The stimulant blast? No, that's ridiculous; you two don't even have a Jaeger."

"I don't care!" Raleigh snapped. "I'm not sleeping through an attack!"

But he winced again when someone rapped on the door, and Marshall Pentecost appeared. "Doctor? What's the status?"

"Give me the shot - "

"_Wait_." Faison stalked out of the room and shut the door.

Yancy caught Raleigh to try and stop him from following, but his brother pulled free. It had to look ridiculous, him barely able to stand as he came out, cringing from the full light. Faison was speaking to Pentecost in a hushed, urgent voice, pointedly ignoring Raleigh, and now Yancy was the one who cringed. _Damn, that is the absolute worst way to deal with Rals when he gets in a mood like this. _

The look Pentecost gave them definitely didn't help: it was... dismissive. "There is no point in subjecting yourself to the stimulant rebound, Ranger. Your Jaeger is still in pieces in Sao Paulo."

Gritting his teeth, breathing shallow from the pain Yancy could tell was only getting worse, Raleigh stood his ground. "I know we're not being deployed, sir. But we're still on alert, and somewhere, there is gonna be deployment. I can't be sedated."

"Rals!" Yancy near-enough pleaded, but his brother shot him a furious glare.

"_You promised,"_ he growled.

_Fuck. _Yancy almost, _almost _contradicted him. Almost told Pentecost and Faison that Raleigh wasn't thinking clearly, of course, they shouldn't consider something so pointless as pumping him full of stimulants to hold the attack back for a few hours with the inevitable rebound afterwards making it that much worse later. This was just bravado talking, him trying to see how far he could go again and not being willing to stop until he was flattened again...

...but he couldn't. Because as frustrated as Yancy was, he knew Raleigh was still thinking clearly... if stupidly and rashly. _I promised I wouldn't interfere with your life again, even if I thought I knew better. _He'd promised himself, and then he'd promised his brother.

"Raleigh, this is crazy," Carolina protested. "You can't _do _anything!"

"I can be on top of what's going on," Raleigh shot back. He eyed Pentecost. "It's my choice, sir."

Faison had gone for back-up; she was on the vid comm to Dr. Tán in Anchorage. "Do you have any idea how painful that rebound is?!" Tán was saying. "It shouldn't be authorized unless there's no other choice!"

Pentecost wasn't looking at them; he was looking at Raleigh, and his expression was... contemptuous. Yancy felt his fists tighten. Even now, as exasperated (bordering on desperate) as he felt, he still bristled at that attitude directed at his brother. Near the door hovered Tendo and a few of the crew who should probably already be in the war room, but they were frozen, watching the standoff with wide eyes.

_"Do you know the difference between perseverance and ego?_" Pentecost had asked. Raleigh had said he didn't think it mattered. Here was the case in point.

Nikki leaned toward one of Dr. Faison's assistants. "What's in that stimulant blast?" she muttered. Whatever the guy whispered made her eyes go wide, and she looked urgently at Raleigh, trying to catch his eye, shaking her head. Yancy could guess what she was thinking: _Don't do it, Spunky. _

_What are you trying to prove, Rals?! _

The Fightmasters had managed not to hurt him, but Tessori wasn't here. This wasn't a test or a spar. But Pentecost wasn't overruling Raleigh, and Raleigh had turned his attention back to Faison. "Is that stuff actually dangerous?"

She was examining the vials, scowling. "We don't know," she ground out. "Jaeger-head is _probably _just a harmless neural surge, but we _don't know _for sure. This is an asinine reason to pump you full of powerful drugs."

"Is it my decision or not?" Raleigh hissed. But he was having to hold onto the nearest counter to stand up straight, and Yancy could see he was starting to shake.

Pentecost stared at him for a long time, lips thin, eyes scathing, then, at last, he gave the faintest snort. "Fine. If you're determined, Ranger Becket, then fine. Give him the treatment." He turned away in disgust, but Faison didn't move.

"Is that an _order, _Marshall?"

Pentecost looked at Raleigh. Yancy held his breath. "Yes. If he wants it, then do it."

_God damn it._

But Faison shut her eyes for a moment, then slid the pharmaceutical locker drawer closed again. All her staff visibly braced themselves, and Yancy figured it out just before she said it: "No, sir."

Now Pentecost gave her his undivided attention, and finally, Raleigh's own self-important stance faltered. Pentecost's voice was low, level, and fucking terrifying. "Are you refusing to obey my order, Doctor?"

"Yes, I am." She turned her head, eyes hard. She was a small woman, soft-spoken and clearly no military medic, but at this moment, she was an immovable object, challenging everyone else to be the unstoppable force. "I won't administer medication for purposes of torture, even by the patient's own choice." She shot Raleigh a glance no less scornful than what Pentecost had given him. "Whatever macho point you're trying to make, I will not help you." She turned back to the Marshall. "So you can report me for insubordination - "

" - Wait!" Raleigh took a step forward, and almost dropped; he had to grab the counter again. "Okay. Just - don't, okay. Ground me."

There was a collective whoosh of breath from the Gipsy staff by the door, but the medical staff were still anxiously watching Pentecost. He didn't betray any obvious satisfaction, but said, "Then the matter's closed. You're in Dr. Faison's supervision until she releases you. Now let's proceed with the _small _issue of the kaiju currently in the ocean."

_Ouch. _

Pentecost stalked out, barking "Stations!" at the Gipsy personnel who lingered. Shooting Yancy pained looks, they scattered, leaving him to deal with his idiot brother and the now-thoroughly-peeved medics.

To Dr. Faison's credit, she didn't rub Raleigh's nose in it, just beckoned to Yancy. "C'mon. Dark room. Martín, give him a hand."

"Dumbass," someone muttered, slipping past them, and the big orderly who came to help keep Raleigh on his feet was rougher than he needed to be. But the fight had gone out of Raleigh, and he slumped in their grasp, squinting in the lights.

In its own way, this was starting to feel like that night in Anchorage after he and Raleigh had fought. Everyone was glaring at them. Why were so many of them glaring at Yancy too? He hadn't... _but we come as a pair now. I should've been able to stop him before it got that far._

Shouldn't he?

The dark room in the Lima Shatterdome was bigger than the little store room where Yancy had spent his Jaeger-head vacation. It was essentially another full-sized room of the infirmary, big enough for several beds, cool, silent with thickly-padded, reinforced walls. Dr. Faison shot Martín a warning look when he more or less dropped Raleigh once they reached the bed. "Turn the lights out as you go," she said curtly, pulling a pair of night vision glasses over her nose.

Yancy was still easing Raleigh into the bed when the place went black, and he was blinded. He felt Dr. Faison press a pair of goggles into his hand and fumbled them on. Raleigh was starting to shake harder, and the phantom throb in Yancy's own head was growing... along with a strange tightness in Yancy's throat that he realized was Raleigh, not him.

"'m sorry, Doctor," his brother mumbled, his eyes squeezed shut.

"Shh." She put a cold pack on his forehead with gentle hands - but she didn't tell him it was okay. "I'm giving you some painkillers. The worst should be past in a day." He bit his lip as she injected him, then she asked Yancy, "Do you know where the pressure points are? That can help."

"Yeah. I can stay, right?"

"Of course." She pointed to the pager next to the bed. "I'll be on call as long as the alert goes on, so page me anytime. If he starts seeing glare or hallucinates, call me right away."

"Yes, ma'am." She patted his shoulder and then let herself out. Not a sound came into the dark room once she'd closed the door, although Yancy knew the Shatterdome had to be full of activity with the alert going on. Feeling drained, he started cautiously rubbing Raleigh's temples. Raleigh's breath hitched, and he hesitated. "Did that hurt?"

"Yance... I'm so sorry." He sounded broken, with more than just pain. "I didn't... didn't want..."

_Oh, Rals. What the hell am I gonna do with you? _"Just rest, kiddo."

"_Can't!_" Raleigh was breaking, and the worst of this damn attack hadn't even hit yet. "Yance, don't... please..." It was getting worse, fast, and the painkillers were only making him less coherent.

There wasn't strictly-speaking a ghost drift between their minds now. Probably a good thing, because now all Yancy had to deal with was a dull, phantom throb and sympathetic pain from his own memories, rather than a repeat performance of his neurons blasting and all his blood vessels contracting. So he couldn't _hear/feel_ what Raleigh was thinking the way they did in the drift... but they'd drifted more than long enough for him to work out what his brother meant:

_Don't hate me. Don't be disgusted with me. Don't be ashamed of me. I can't rest if you're mad at me. _After all, Yancy felt the same desperation every time he fucked up. God knew, he'd fucked up his share of the time.

He sighed and ran his fingers through his kid brother's hair, gently massaging his scalp. "It's okay, Rals. It'll be okay. I'm not mad." _Not anymore. _"We'll get through it." They both knew he didn't mean the Jaeger-head.

* * *

><p><em>Of all the puffed-up, reckless, immature Jaeger hoodlums, Raleigh bloody Becket is surely the worst! <em>It was just as well that Razorfin turned in the exact opposite direction of Lima, because Lima's Marshall wasn't in the best of mindsets. _I shouldn't have let him change his mind. I should have ordered Faison to do it and let the brat writhe for a few days. Maybe he'd have learned his lesson about priorities. _

Once it was clear the bogey was headed towards China, Stacker and his fellow Western Marshalls issued the stand-down order and breathed a little easier, but that only left him free to wallow in pent-up frustrated energy. He exercised in his own quarters to escape the nervous stares of Gipsy Danger's crew and the medical staff, and seethed at Becket and Faison. Well, he had a little more understanding of Faison's position, though her defiance rankled him. Still, even that turned most of his ire on the mass of over-inflated ego and brainless-muscle-in-a-drivesuit that was Gipsy's left hemisphere.

After several hours of trying to work off his frustration while watching the bogey's deadly red blip meandering around the East China Sea, he felt a little more himself. Or rather, he at least felt that he'd regained enough composure that he was no longer in danger of beheading the next person who looked at him wrong.

Back in LOCCENT, the Gages and the Khouris were quietly observing the pre-deployment shuffle, musing on Razorfin's movements with the local K-Watch staff. "Horizon Brave and Nova Hyperion are going to Shanghai. Crimson Typhoon's staying in Hong Kong with Silver Lion, and they'll float Shaolin Rogue out if they need to," Tendo Choi reported. "Tidal Dragon's with Coyote Tango in Naha. Lucky Seven's in Manila, Vulcan Specter's staying in Sydney in case he veers off. The Russians are all at pre-dep."

"Nasty weather in Nagasaki. Let's hope he doesn't run north," Bruce Gage remarked.

"The only thing I ever _hope _for is that these fuckers turn around and go back into their hole," snorted someone.

"If wishes were Jaegers, we'd all be Rangers," Choi replied.

"Oh, good one, Señor Choi," chuckled Isabel Khouri. She spotted Stacker in the reflection of the screen and nodded to him. "No landfall imminent, Marshall."

_Well-warned, Señora Khouri, _he thought, mostly without rancor as the staff and other Rangers straightened up quickly.

An hour later, Razorfin moved into the shallower parts of the reefs making up the Okinawa Islands, and Tidal Dragon went out for offshore intercept. Stacker caught Choi whispering to Brandon Pines. "Maybe go let Yancy know, just so he and Rals are up on what's going on."

They stiffened and eyed Stacker when they realized he'd heard them, and Stacker maliciously pondered ordering Pines to stay where he was. _Let them stew... No._ That sort of vindictive motivation was no better than Becket's pride-driven posturing earlier. So he nodded to Pines, who departed with visible relief. _After all, Yancy doesn't have the benefits of sedatives, and now has both his brother and the alert to worry about. _

Nor had Yancy been the one whose arrogance had triggered all this additional tension. He didn't deserve to be punished for Raleigh's behavior.

Dragon had been designed for water combat, and her engineers had to be dancing with joy at her performance. She took point and drove bunker-buster torpedoes into the kaiju's flank, then tore into it with her talons. She could also draw water straight from the ocean, blasting it out superheated and flash-boiling at close range. Coyote waded to the nearest uninhabited shore until Razorfin nearly blundered into her, then delivered still more punishment.

Sadly, the bastard escaped and dove, but K-Watch tracked him as he aimed next for Shanghai, and Horizon Brave was waiting, joined by Nova Hyperion. They dispatched him at the ten-mile mark after three hours of combat, sustaining what looked like only minor damage to themselves.

In Lima, the staff and Rangers applauded happily, and Stacker gave the LOCCENT crews their usual assignment to assist in the post-engagement investigation. "I like my job _so _much more when it's a clean kill!" sighed Choi.

Clean was a relative term in the Kaiju War, of course. There had been fatalities in the shipping and fishing traffic and the smaller populated islands, as usual. But Okinawa's northernmost cities with their thousands had been spared, as had Shanghai, a city of twenty-four million.

This was progress.

Stacker logged onto the network in his quarters for his usual post-engagement routine. Even as cross as he felt, his first order of business was the same as it had been for two years:

_SPentecost: Online  
>[Private]: Online<em>

_[Private]: Is it dead, Sensei?  
>SPentecost: It is dead. Japan, Korea, and China drove it away from the cities.<br>[Private]: Which Jaegers were they?  
>SPentecost: Tidal Dragon, Coyote Tango, Horizon Brave, and Nova Hyperion.<br>[Private]: Do you miss Coyote Tango?  
>SPentecost: Sometimes. <em>

He changed the subject to her studies, and spent a relaxed hour talking with her. After the next engagement in the winter, assuming all went well (granted, that was still a large assumption in the war), he would take her to Hawaii to visit Tamsin. As he logged off, his comm buzzed.

It was Cady Spencer and Tendo Choi. "Sir, we have a preliminary report from the Okinawa engagement for your review."

Spencer and Choi were among the formerly civilian recruits still intimidated as hell by Stacker and the other senior officers - Rangers excepted - and avoided any contact not absolutely necessary. They could have just transmitted it to the Marshall's review, knowing Stacker would be expecting it. Instead, they wanted to walk it down.

This was going to be irritating. "Anything interesting, gentlemen?"

To their credit, the LOCCENT officers kept professional detachment as they handed him the tablet and explained the issue. "Tidal Dragon has had to be moved into an exclusion zone, sir. There's a problem with the cooling system on their reactor."

Actually, that was fairly urgent. "Status of the pilots?"

"Evacuated, but they and the recovery crews are being hospitalized for exposure."

_Damn. And we were ready to call this another decisive win. "_What about Coyote? How close was she?"

"The Tunaris are clear, but their lift crew is under observation. Only minor damage to her systems. Admiral Yamamoto and General Liang are asking for a full medical review of radiation protocols in the Mark-2's and Mark-3's," said Choi.

Hadn't they focused on prevention after all the problems with the Mark-1's? "Done. I'll instruct Dr. Faison to form a task force."

Now the pair exchanged glances, and Stacker knew what else was coming. Choi was the one who decided to go for it. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

His lips twitched against his will. He could always tell when the civilian transplants had internalized more military protocol from Star Trek than from the real world. "Granted."

"Raleigh Becket's been punished enough, and it wasn't Dr. Faison's fault."

Choi and Spencer were closer in age to the Gages than the Beckets, but they were another pair who acted more like eternal college students. The only thing that prevented Stacker from brushing them off sharply was the fact that they were at least making an effort to be professional. He ought to encourage that, even if it felt more like child-rearing than commanding a military base.

So he informed them neutrally, "As far as Dr. Faison's role goes, the matter is closed."

He knew who they were really worried about. "Sir... he knows it was stupid, and he's still in there now. Isn't Jaeger-head enough?"

"Ranger Becket disrupted this base during an alert for no better reason than his ego, Mr. Choi." _I'm not going to let him off with a pat on the head. _

But Spencer narrowed his eyes. "May _I _have permission to speak freely, sir?"

"You already have it."

"_Very _freely?"

_Oh, this'll be interesting. _"Granted."

The Beckets' snarky, loud, frequent partner-in-crime visibly braced himself, and said, "He wasn't the only one." Stacker raised an eyebrow. "It... appeared to me that Ranger Becket wasn't the only one whose ego was talking during that confrontation."

_Well. _No wonder Spencer had wanted to confirm freedom to be blunt. "You think so?"

Choi nodded. "He... Sir, _you _could have ordered him grounded. Dr. Faison was all for it. So was Yance - I mean, Ranger Beck - I mean Gipsy One. That would have ended it. But you..." he trailed off. Impatiently, Stacker gestured at him to continue. "There didn't have to be a standoff, sir. There were two people in it."

Keeping his face straight, Stacker mulled over that. Spencer cautiously dropped another weight onto the scale. "At Raleigh's final spar in 2016, I was there, sir. I remember the way you looked at him."

Now an incredulous snort escaped Stacker. "Are you laboring under the impression that I have a _grudge_ against Raleigh Becket?!"

They looked at each other, and something heavier began to settle in Stacker's insides… something that he couldn't brush aside so easily. "He can be immature, we all know it," said Spencer. He gave a wry half-smile. "He's not the only one, we know that too. But... sir, with you, it seems more... personal."

At that moment, he heard Luna _and _Tamsin in the back of his mind, imagined them sniggering somewhere behind him, watching the show. _"Zing!" _Luna would hiss in delight.

_"You're down on points, Stacks!_" Tamsin would add.

If they'd seen the confrontation with the Beckets in the infirmary, they'd have been rolling their eyes, calling it nothing more than a pissing contest…

... with two contestants: Raleigh bloody Becket and Stacker bloody Pentecost. _"Horns locked and measuring tape out,_" Tamsin would have announced loudly. Too bad she hadn't. Then it might not have gone on as long as it had.

_Damn. _"I don't have any sort of personal dislike of Ranger Becket - either of them."

_"That's a lie, that's a lie!" _Luna sang in his head. _"He reminds you of someone, big brother!_"

_Especially when he's being stupid, little sister, now be quiet and let me work_.

Choi said urgently, "He won't try anything like that again, sir. We've all been checking on him; he's apologized over and over even when he shouldn't be talking at all."

_Enough. _He stood up. "I'll take your concerns into consideration. Dismissed." He said nothing about what he would actually _do _to or about Becket, and the men knew it, but they went.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Next Weekend: **__Tamsin Sevier is in the house... sort-of. Stacker gets some advice and insight from his best friend, and our heroes have learned some lessons after getting knocked down a peg in **Chapter Thirty-Three: Middle Ground!**  
><em>

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide **

Andrés Alcazar and Daniel Moreno: Matador Fury's Rangers, Mexican nationals, age 39. Andrés was a historian and Daniel was a lawyer, both writing and working against institutional corruption before being imprisoned for an unknown period. They were released along with other non-violent prisoners to attempt the Jaeger Academy, but have not yet been granted a pardon.

Elida Morales and Nicho Conte: Rangers of Rio Sentry, a Panamanian Mark-4 Jaeger. Late 20s, Elida is Hispanic American and Nicho is native Costa Rican. They met for the first time at the Jaeger Academy but succeeded at drifting.

Brian Patrick and Janet McDonald - First cousins, Irish nationals, mid-20s. One of four teams in the Jaeger Academy's Class 2016-B (including the Beckets) to survive the second cut, but failed to make the third cut. They joined support staff at the Panama Shatterdome and are now on Rio Sentry's crew.

Reynaldo ("Rey") and Isabel Khouri: Rangers of Amazon Delta, a Mark-3 Jaeger jointly funded and built by Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. A married couple from Guayaquil, Ecuador in their early 30s. Reynaldo is of Lebanese descent, and Isabel is mestizo.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative, Mexican-American, mid-60s, crew den mother.

Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, late 20s, African-American from Atlanta, GA, attended academy with Beckets and his sister, Chloe, who is now in K-Watch.

Nicola Harris: Rescue/recovery EMT with Whiskey Gamma, one of Gipsy Danger's strike trooper teams, age 21 from San Diego, CA, black/Latina. Occasionally has a casual hook-up with Raleigh.

Cady Spencer: Gipsy Danger LOCCENT Technician (along with Tendo Choi), Filipino-American, age 27 from Portland, Oregon.

Brandon Pines: Support chopper pilot for team Whiskey Gamma, one of Gipsy Danger's four strike trooper teams, early 30s from Monterey, CA, transferred from the US Air Force.


	33. Middle Ground

_**Author's Notes:**__ Many thanks to everyone for the wonderful reviews, and please keep them coming! Also, I have begun a series of side-ficlets that are companion/background pieces to the main stories in this series: Tales From The Front Lines. Please check it out, particularly if you want more of the Mark-1 glory days! As for this story, fans of the novelization may recognize a scene from this chapter; it was one of my favorites. I quoted a couple of lines straight from the book.  
><em>

_**Cameo Note:**__ Aw, none of you watched The West Wing back on NBC?! Dr. Eleanor Faison is the married, graduated name of Ellie Bartlett, middle daughter of President Josiah "Jed" Bartlett. My US President from 2016 through 2020 in this story is President Matt Santos, who succeeded Jed Bartlett on the show. Compared to her gregarious sisters, Ellie seems quiet and meek, but has deep conviction and compassion. She married a fellow medical student named Vic Faison, whose sole description is "the fruit fly guy." In this storyverse, he's gone from fruit fly DNA research to K-Science.  
><em>

**Chapter Thirty-Three: Middle Ground**

_Lima Shatterdome…  
>September 1, 2018…<em>

Once they'd gone, Stacker rubbed his eyes and brought up the security camera feeds to the infirmary. The dark room was... dark. _"And Stacks is the smart one," _Tamsin would snort. He toggled the infrared to reveal the single occupied bed and the tall figure in the chair next to it.

It had been more than a day, but Raleigh Becket was still very much in the grip of the attack; Stacker could tell by how still he was. His brother moved his fingers methodically from one pressure point to the next, massaging Raleigh's temples, sometimes holding his trembling hand. There was an IV in Raleigh's arm now. This had to be a bad attack even by Jaeger-head standards.

Adrenaline tended to delay it, the medics' reports said. Maybe the hotheaded Ranger had effectively given himself his own stimulant blast, which might explain why the attack was lasting so long and so severe.

_"He's been punished enough,_" Choi and Spencer insisted.

_"Have a heart, Stacks,"_ Tamsin would say.

His interface buzzed, and he switched from the security feed to the network.

_PPDC Internal Network_

_TSevier: Online_

Stacker chuckled to himself and logged on.

_SPentecost: Online_

_SPentecost: Think of the devil, and she shall IM._

_TSevier: What can I say, I'm a twenty-first century beast. My number is 777. So, our successors did us proud yesterday!_

_SPentecost: They surely did. Mako asked if I missed Coyote._

_TSevier: How is she? Do the attacks scare her?_

_SPentecost: The school doesn't allow the broadcasts to be played, but Dr. Schneider tells me word gets around . She does worry. At least many of her classmates also have family in the Corps, and aren't cavalier about the danger. Her English is nearly fluent, and now she's picking up Mandarin._

_TSevier: When will you visit her again?_

_SPentecost: Her next holiday is the end of November for US Thanksgiving, then she has two weeks for Christmas. If all goes well, I'll bring her to see you._

_TSevier: Is that such a merry holiday for her to be visiting an invalid?_

_SPentecost; Don't talk that way, Tam. You've been in remission for six months, and she sings your praises no less than mine. Dr. Schneider reports that she's among the students who have all the mechs' stat sheets on the bedroom wall. _

_TSevier: Good lord, you're raising a Jaeger Fly!_

_SPentecost: God forbid! She and her roommate both have aspirations of piloting._

_TSevier: Let's see, four years from now, they'll have a Mark-7 and have more of the technical kinks sorted out. That's quite the new wrinkle on the Jaeger-head phenomenon._

Stacker blinked. Really?! So much for Spencer and Choi having handled this professionally, if that idiotic spat with Becket was all over the network!

_SPentecost: Bloody hell. I'm going to start lopping off heads._

_TSevier: What for, it's not as if they could have known!_

_SPentecost: All the crews know that if they chatter about every idle argument in the Dome, soon it will spread beyond the Corps gossip into the media, and that's something nobody needs._

_TSevier: But it had nothing to do with Lima. It'll probably be in the next report._

_SPentecost: I don't understand. What are you talking about?_

_TSevier: Eden Assassin. What are YOU talking about?_

Oops. Now he'd done it. Cringing, he tried to return to her subject.

_SPentecost: Something unrelated. My mistake. What happened to Eden's crew?_

_TSevier: Oh no you don't, Stacker Pentecost! Spill - what happened in Lima?_

_SPentecost: If it hasn't reached the rumor mill, I would prefer to keep it that way, Tam. It was just a minor dispute with the medics and one of the Rangers. _

_TSevier: Who am I going to tell?_

_SPentecost: Kaori, and Kaori will tell Duc, and Duc will tell the whole bloody world._

There was a long pause before Tamsin started typing again.

_TSevier: Kaori's not doing so well. _

_SPentecost: Damn. I didn't realize. How bad?_

_TSevier: Bad. It's still spreading, and it had started spreading long before the medics caught it. Duc isn't teaching at Academy this term. He arrived the day before the alert._

_SPentecost: I'll email him, but if there's anything I can do at any time, call me. _

_TSevier: I will. As for Eden, Peter Lepp was enjoying his third visit from Jaeger-head when the alert began. When K-Watch thought the bogey might head their way, he took the stimulant blast. It worked and lasted through their deployment, but two hours ago the rebound hit, now both he and Hedy have it._

_SPentecost: Doesn't Hedy get migraines?_

_TSevier: Yes, hence the medics' surprise. Maybe it was the ghost drift, but nobody's really sure. They're both under sedation now. The docs are worried there may be actual damage from the rebound. _

Well, that was an illuminating conversation. After he signed off from talking with Tamsin, Stacker headed for the infirmary. The medical staff were mincing around almost as badly as Gipsy Danger's crew, to his annoyance. _At bloody ease, I don't bite! _Not often, anyway.

Faison had a team already working on the radiation issues, and unlike most of her underlings, didn't show a hint of awkwardness when he came in. Or even when he asked, "May I speak to you in your office, Doctor?"

That got soft hisses from the watchers, but he also heard the military personnel letting their breath out. They were correctly interpreting the situation: if he'd intended to reprimand her - or worse - he'd have called her to his own office, and he wouldn't be asking. She wasn't military, but she got the message even before he addressed her in private.

"I owe you an apology, Dr. Faison," he told her formally. "I shouldn't have permitted the incident with Ranger Becket to escalate the way it did, nor should I have put you in the middle of it."

She nodded, a small smile on her face. "Thank you, sir. For what it's worth, Ranger Becket has apologized to me too - several times, with decreasing coherence, but I think he's very aware he was also in the wrong."

_"Also." _So she wasn't denying that Stacker had played a role in it, which meant it wasn't just Choi and Spencer's biased fondness for Becket at play. _So, I really did let myself get drawn into a pissing contest with a bull-headed teenager during alert. One of the more inglorious moments in this Marshall's career. _ "Is he improving?"

Faison toggled up the security feed to the dark room, and studied the image. Raleigh had shifted onto his side, though Yancy was sitting up in the chair at the bedside, still faithfully trying to soothe him. "I think we're finally on the back end of it. The worst ran twenty-three hours - the entire length of the engagement," she added. "Yancy's exhausted. Sir, did you hear what happened to Lepp and Keres in Russia?"

He nodded. _If she hadn't refused to give that treatment, we'd have both of Gipsy's pilots seriously ill now. _"I haven't seen any medical reports. Is the stimulant blast going to be deemed unsafe?"

She pulled the reports up so fast that she obviously had been reading them already, then said slowly, "I don't _think _so. I've looked at the scans from Pete and Hedy; so far there haven't been any seizures or bleeds. The rebound is just setting yet a new height for the Ranger pain threshold." She shot him a hard look. "While all the Rangers will need to be made aware, I don't see any need to rub Raleigh's nose in it."

"I had no intention of doing that." Still, maybe in the future when the younger Rangers tried to overreach, it might still be wise to remind them that it wasn't their own health and safety at risk. Even if the people under their protection didn't move them, risk to their partners might.

* * *

><p>"How's our Becket boys doing?" Bruce and Trevin asked the Gipsy crew at breakfast.<p>

Coffee cup in each hand, Tendo yawned heavily before saying, "Looks like it's _finally _wearing off, damn brain cells. They're still in the dark room, but Rals managed to get some fluids down this morning."

The twins sighed in relief, counting their blessings that they'd never piloted a Jaeger other than Romeo. They had looked in on Raleigh and Yancy the night before; Raleigh had still been in agony, and Yancy... well. "Has big bro gotten any rest?"

Almost everyone from Team Gipsy made the same sheepish, rueful face. "You know how he gets," said Nikki Harris. "He won't sleep if Raleigh's hurting. It's been more than a day, and he's still pacing around to keep awake. We've all tried, offered to take over so he can lie down. He just _won't._"

"Once Raleigh gets to sleep, Yancy will," said Carolina Olivares.

"Or he'll drop," Cady muttered.

"How'd it go, Cady? We adore him, but sometimes we just wanna knock his head against the wall?" Nikki said. "That goes for _both _of 'em."

Carolina chuckled and swatted her arm. "Such is life, Bonita. And as we now see after thirty-six hours, stubbornness to the point of stupidity runs in that family."

She had a point. When Bruce and Trevin went down to the infirmary after breakfast, they found Raleigh finally asleep rather than just doped into a stupor, and Yancy dozing in his chair with his head on the edge of Raleigh's pillow.

"How's our favorite troublemakers, Doc?" they asked Dr. Faison.

She looked them up and down and deadpanned, "You both look fine to me."

"Oh, snap!" snickered a nurse.

They mock-pouted, and Faison waved them off. "They're both asleep, at last. Raleigh Becket just set a new record for duration of a Jaeger-head attack, but I have a feeling Pete Lepp and Hedy Keres are going to snag that title shortly."

The twins grimaced at each other. "Yeah, we've heard. That blows."

Another of Faison's staff muttered, "And unlike Becket, Lepp actually had a good reason. No justice."

"What did I tell you, Martín?" Faison snapped before Bruce or Trevin could react. "That whole incident involved adult officers acting like juveniles; anyone who drags it out is on report, so spread _that _around!"

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry," the orderly slunk away.

The doctor eyed Bruce and Trevin. "That goes for you two too, and the other teams."

They held up their hands in unison. "You know we like Rals, ma'am. Maybe he did deserve a kick in the ass, but he got one in spades already. We don't kick people while they're down."

After another day, the Beckets were up and about, to everyone's relief. As far as Bruce and Trevin could tell, nobody was really giving Raleigh a hard time. Maybe even the medical staff with grudges recognized what Raleigh's friends did: kiddo was already beating himself up and didn't need anyone else piling on.

Faison informed the Rangers as a group of the "latest development" in the Jaeger-head front: that the rebound was so severe from the stimulant blast that it could nail the other partner even if they'd been thought immune. Bruce and Trevin didn't bother pretending they weren't watching for Raleigh's reaction (and in their defense, neither did Rey and Isabel Khouri.)

He went dead white and barely said a word to anybody for the rest of the day.

Two days later, Eden's jockeys were reportedly on the mend. Gipsy's left hemisphere, on the other hand, wasn't. Raleigh seemed downright depressed, and damn if that didn't put a shadow over the whole city of Lima. Yancy, still tired and drained from his marathon nursing session, was frustrated and stressed.

"He's taking too much on himself. That's how this whole thing got started."

"_You _accusing _Rals _of taking too much on himself?" Christian Warner snorted. "If that ain't the pot callin' the kettle blond!"

_Grooooan. _

"Or Strawberry calling Sunshine blond," Tendo suggested.

More groans.

"And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have the finalists for the new position of Gipsy Danger's Punner-in-chief, so cast your votes!" announced Antwan. "What's he said when you've talked to him, Yance?"

Yancy shuffled, avoiding their eyes. "Not a lot. Just that he almost got me back in the dark room. Dammit, I've forgiven him; it wasn't _that _big a deal! Just stupid posturing, and nobody got hurt, but he won't forgive himself!"

"It'll have to come from somebody else, then," said Tendo.

"Carolina tried."

"Hm." Antwan clapped his hands. "So if not Mom, let Dad take a shot. Well, I am old enough for both of you!" But Yancy winced, and he wrinkled his nose. "Just stuck my foot in my mouth, didn't I?"

Laughing wearily, Yancy waved him off. "Not really, man. Not to me. I'll buy you all the drinks in Lima if you can get him to chill."

"Trust a son of the islands, my friend! The only way I could be more qualified is if I'd worked at Disneyland." Antwan strutted off.

Team Gipsy and Team Romeo exchanged looks. Tendo shrugged. "Well, if talking to him doesn't work, Antwan'll just break out the weed. God bless Jamaica."

* * *

><p>Raleigh retreated to the edge of the Lima Dome grounds to escape everybody's stares and well-meaning pep talks, and found himself next to the memorial that had been built to Talon Tasmania. They'd been assigned officially to Australia, but at the time they'd gone down, they'd been under Lima's command. It was beautiful, a sculpture built in a group effort by three artists: one from Ecuador, one from Argentina, and one from Australia. It was close enough to the fence that civilians could leave flowers nearby. There were a lot of fresh ones, which meant people were visiting regularly even eighteen months after the fact.<p>

He cleared off the dead greenery and waterlogged mementos just for something to do, and then sat studying the inscription as if staring at it would reveal some hidden message.

_In defense of all mankind. _It was part of the dedication ceremony for the Jaegers, a play on the old Apollo 11 line.

_What was I trying to defend? _Ego. And he'd made a complete ass of himself in front of everyone, pissed off Pentecost, and nearly got the chief medic into trouble. And Yancy...

Scuttlebutt was that Hedy Keres had been down with the Jaeger-head rebound longer than her husband, even though she was a migraine-sufferer who should've been immune. They'd been in the hospital for four days after Razorfin was killed.

Raleigh had nearly brought that down on Yancy. "Rals, it's okay!" his brother kept insisting. "Yeah, the thing in the infirmary was dumb, but you're not gonna do try it again, and nobody got hurt! I forgive you, kiddo, let it go!"

But even hearing those words out loud, all Raleigh could hear was a voice snarling in his own head. _You stupid fucking piece of arrogant shit, look what you almost did! You don't deserve him, you don't deserve Gipsy, you're not worthy of any of this._

"Becket, Becket, Becket!" A familiar merry voice and islander accent broke through his self-recrimination, and a familiar looming silhouette came through the sun towards him. "Really, man? Are you blaming yourself for this now too?" Antwan gestured to the memorial.

Raleigh snorted. "No, but until now, people didn't nag me over here."

"Then come on, because I'm gonna nag you." Antwan tipped his fisherman's cap to the memorial with one hand and hauled Raleigh along by the the arm with the other. Caught off guard, Raleigh was too busy trying not to face-plant on the concrete to get away from him. Antwan dropped his voice and said sheepishly, "I put my foot in it to Yancy earlier, I think."

"Oh?" _Great, as if Yance doesn't have enough to worry about. _

"I, ah, said I was old enough to be your dad. He said it's all right, but..." Antwan wrinkled his nose as they came to a stop under the few trees still standing on-base. "Bad?"

Oh, was that all? _Whew_. "Nah, not really. Our dad died last year, and... well, we weren't his biggest fans even before then. If Yance says it's all right, then it's... oh." He'd been had. He sighed. "You played me, _mon_ _capitaine_."

Antwan laughed and clapped him on the back, nearly knocking him over. Guy really didn't know his own strength (or he did and just didn't care.) "Seriously, it did really happen, but now I'm glad I asked you. Come on, Sunshine, forgive yourself. Your crew misses you, and so does your brother."

"I know. I'm not trying to bring everybody down, buddy." Raleigh leaned against one of the trees. "It was just so damn stupid. Me and my Jaeger-sized ego." He looked miserably at the older man and confessed, "I hate being out of action. I miss Gipsy. The simulator's not the same."

"I get that. We all do. If she was here, ready to go, and the kaiju went somewhere else, that's all right. Knowing that she's _not_, and she couldn't be if the bastards came this way, that's different." _Well, whaddaya know. He may not have made Ranger, but he really does get it. "_Feeling helpless doesn't come easy to anybody. Even less nowadays."

Talking to Antwan wasn't a magic pill that took away all the guilt, but Raleigh did feel better afterward. For the others' sake, especially Yancy's, he put more effort into smiling and laughing again, even if his heart wasn't always in it. It didn't always fool the crew (and _never _fooled Yance) but the rest of the Dome staff seemed more at ease.

Raleigh also caught Yancy perusing the latest reports on the after-effects of Jaeger-head, and discovered, to both of their chagrin, that "general depression and lethargy for anywhere from seven to ten days following an attack" was a documented symptom.

"I'm getting better," he told Yance after pointing that out to him. "It's been six days, and I'm... getting over it. All of it, including the stupid part that I can't blame on my nerve cells," he added.

Yancy hugged him more gently than necessary. "Good. All this flailing's hard on my old bones. Let's see if the man in charge'll let us go off-base, huh?"

They got a pass from a completely-straight-faced Pentecost (but also with mock-suspicion from Dr. Faison _and _the duty MPs.) Raleigh wasn't really up for crowds, blaring music, and dancing yet, and Yancy knew it without him having to say. So they didn't invite the crew and headed for quieter part of town, wandering around the historic district without their bomber jackets, just wanting to be a couple of guys on the street rather than celebrities.

It was spring down in the Southern Hemisphere, sunny and breezy without the usual Lima fog, and they didn't even need to talk, just wandered where they wanted side-by-side, checking out girls and admiring buildings. Raleigh's hobbies had always been planes, trains, and automobiles, but along with comics, Yancy had a thing for architecture, and Raleigh could almost hear him studying the different eras visible in the older part of town.

They picked a restaurant, ordered food to share, and wandered through two different museums and parks always stopping at the exact same time to look at things and handing each other things without having to ask. But it still wasn't until late evening that they realized they were majorly ghosting.

_So much for being out of practice without Gipsy._

_"_So much for being..." They blinked at each other, then started to laugh.

They wound up in a little hole-in-the-wall bar near the engineering school; a group of girls recognized them and bought them a round. By mutual unspoken decision, they split up with their favorites... until the girls and their friends realized there was a four-way, trilingual conversation going on in two non-adjacent booths.

"It's true?! That urban legend that the pilots are telepathic?!" Yancy's admirer exclaimed.

"Not usually," Yance admitted.

"Not like this," Raleigh confirmed. "Outside the Jaeger or the simulator."

Giggling, the women crowded around them and made them put away their phones, and move out of each other's sight then subjected them to the predictable "psychic" tests with playing cards, "how many fingers am I holding up.

They passed them all with flying colors. It was the same sort of thing they'd done back after making the first cut: cognitive tests of the drift. However, Raleigh and Yancy had gotten so used to it that they'd forgotten just how weird it was for people outside the Jaeger Program to hear about, let alone see it in action. Gradually, the giggling stopped, and the girls started exchanging nervous looks.

_Oops, I think we overdid it. _

Yeah, they'd creeped everyone out. This was the first time in weeks that either of them had really had a chance to think about getting laid (or at least thought it might get worked into the schedule), but obviously it wasn't going to happen with any of this crowd.

Back at the Dome, they were intrigued by it enough that Yancy wandered down the hall to ask the pons techs about it, and Raleigh went to the rec room to show off. "Hey, Sunshine!" exclaimed Cady, playing chess with one of Amazon Delta's crew. "You're looking better."

"Feeling better, we hope?" added Carolina.

"Yeah, but get this: Yance and I are ghosting all to hell, stronger than we've ever been. We just freaked out a bar full of girls," Raleigh told them.

Isabel Khouri looked over her shoulder from her laptop. "Hm? When did you last drift?"

"Before Razorfin. I mean, we ghost a little all the time, get vibes, but not like this - it's like a full handshake! He's gone to ask the pons guys about it..." Raleigh looked through Yancy's eyes and knew without even having to think about it. "Now they're going to the infirmary."

They soon had an audience of PPDC personnel who were more delighted and less alarmed, and Dr. Faison got more animated than any of them had ever seen her. She practically tackled them into the scanners and peered over the techs' shoulders. "They're not punking us," she informed the onlookers. "See that?" She pointed to the lines on the monitors. "That's a full-blown neural handshake, ninety-eight percent. They could pilot Gipsy without being in her - no, that was _not _an invitation to try."

Raleigh and Yancy pouted in unison – and Raleigh was in the other scanner room.

"Hot damn!"

"Somebody ask Bruce and Trev if they've ever done that."

"They're sailing with Rey," said Isabel. "He and I haven't done this, but we haven't drifted as long as you two." She poked Yancy in the ribs, and everyone oohed and aahed when Raleigh jumped and yelped along with him.

Once Dr. Faison and the pons techs finally let them go, they spent a couple of hours coming up with ways to exploit their party trick, primarily by "psychic" games and then sparring blindfolded in the Kwoon. "That... is... _AWESOME!_" Tendo was gleefully filming them.

As Yancy departed for the showers, Nikki Harris sidled up to Raleigh with a sly grin. "What, you looking for a vicarious threesome?" he purred in her ear.

She laughed. "I'd be lying if I said the thought didn't occur to me. How long's it gonna last?"

"No clue. Maybe you'd have to plug us into the pons and unplug us manually." He winked. He (and Yancy) had a feeling she was mostly pulling his leg - _that_ might be a little weird for them too.

Nikki confirmed with by backing off and concluding, "One at a time's enough for me. No offense to Yancy."

She smirked, but Yancy one-upped her by yelling from the showers: "None taken!"

"OH, HOLY SHIT!" Nikki shoved Raleigh, getting yelps of protest from him and laughter from the milling crew. "Confine your asses to quarters, that's fucking creepy! You damn Rangers!"

"Hey, you started it!" Raleigh whined, dodging her swats.

"Quit beating up on my brother!" Yancy bellowed - still through a closed door.

"Dude, that really is creepy!" Cady Spencer flicked Yancy with a twisted towel, listening for Raleigh to say "ow."

They did more or less confine themselves to quarters, partly so they wouldn't creep anyone else out and also so the crew would quit poking and prodding them. They spent the rest of the night playing chess, to an endless series of draws.

When they woke up in the morning, they were back in their own heads. The final diagnosis of the neurologists and pons scientists was "a spontaneous handshake brought on by neural firing."

The final conclusion of the non-scientists was: "weird."

* * *

><p><em>October 2018…<em>

The mood in the Lima Shatterdome lightened after the Beckets' ghost drift episode, but the ultimate result of the Razorfin engagement wasn't as good as everyone hoped. Tidal Dragon's reactor design was deemed unsafe, and her pilots were forced to retire much as Stacker and Tamsin and the Jessops had been. The brass kept it quiet, but the medics passed around the sad fact that several of the chopper crews were facing lifelong radiation exposure complications - or worse.

"Damn, I loved Dragon's design. That steam blaster was so cool," the engineers lamented.

"Apparently, the saltwater just created too much corrosion in the shielding. Poor guys, one shot and then done."

In early October, Carolina Olivares urgently called a meeting with Stacker and the PR liaisons for Amazon and Romeo. "I've just received a very disturbing tip, Marshall, about an article that's about to be published."

One look at her tablet, and Stacker's heart thudded into his guts. "I take it this is... not a tabloid?"

Olivares sighed. "Not the most reputable paper, no, but also not a supermarket tabloid. And that will be the threshold for the mainstream outlets taking on this subject."

"Dear God," Romeo's liaison murmured, peering at the image. "What a nightmare."

"It could be worse," Olivares pointed out. "They could have evidence."

"You don't think they do?"

She shook her head. "If they did, it would have exploded before now. This is a fishing expedition, but it will still be upsetting for the Rangers and their families."

"How long until it's released?"

"Less than a day."

"Get the Gages and the Beckets in here. They deserve to hear it from us first." Stacker turned to Amazon's liaison. "Fill in the Khouris, and ask them not to go far. Their fellow pilots will need their support."

"You know they'll have it," he said firmly, and left already on his phone.

Stacker looked wearily at the two liaisons. "This was always going to happen, wasn't it?" They both nodded.

_It was inevitable. The Rangers have a powerful and strange bond. People speculate, and the unscrupulous will exploit it if they can. _And in his heart of hearts, Stacker couldn't help but wonder himself if maybe, in some cases, there might be a kernel of truth. _It doesn't matter. Even if there is, we owe it to them to protect them._

The Gages and the Beckets arrived with a lot of noise right until they were outside the office door. Stacker had once grumbled to Olivares that the Gages seemed to have regressed from all discipline. She'd replied that the drift stripped pretenses away. There hadn't been much he could say to that.

At least the four men shut their mouths and straightened up once they came in, and the tension registered on them at once. "You paged us, sir?" asked Bruce Gage, shooting curious glances at Olivares and his own liaison.

Stacker nodded. "Rangers, I'm afraid a very unpleasant media storm is about to descend. We wanted to warn you in private." He nodded to Olivares, who handed them her tablet.

A colorful, professional collage of photographs of Ranger teams - all the siblings and cousins, of which there were many - was the backdrop for a blaring headline: **_The Jaeger Program: A HotBed of Incest?_**

**_To be continued..._**

**_Coming Next Weekend: _**_And our heroes thought the media harping over their dating lives was bad! Fallout spreads from scandal and sensationalism, and Stacker and his fellow senior officers race to circle the wagons around their pilots... and their families. But the next kaiju attack reveals to Team Gipsy that the Jaeger Program has more than just paparazzi to worry about...there is also danger closer to home in __**Chapter Thirty-Four: Somebody's Eyes! **_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Peter Lepp and Hedy Keres: Rangers of Eden Assassin, Russia's Mark-2. Estonian Air Force pilots who met after K-Day when the PPDC was formed. They were part of the first "open admission" class of the Jaeger Academy in early 2016, and fell in love during training and later married. Peter was among the VERY unlucky pilots to suffer multiple attacks of Jaeger-head, but as a migraine sufferer, Hedy was believed immune until now.

Reynaldo ("Rey") and Isabel Khouri: Rangers of Amazon Delta, a Mark-3 Jaeger jointly funded and built by Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. A married couple from Guayaquil, Ecuador in their early 30s. Reynaldo is of Lebanese descent, and Isabel is mestizo.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative, Mexican-American, mid-60s, crew den mother.

Antwan Ferrier: Gipsy Danger Personnel Coordinator, directs Whiskey Gamma, a team of Strike Troopers. The eldest of Team Gipsy after Carolina, Jamaican national, nicknamed _Capitaine_ by the crew because he used to work on cruise ships.

Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, late 20s, African-American from Atlanta, GA, attended academy with Beckets and his sister, Chloe, who is now in K-Watch.

Nicola Harris: Rescue/recovery EMT with Whiskey Gamma, one of Gipsy Danger's strike trooper teams, age 21 from San Diego, CA, black/Latina. Occasionally has a casual hook-up with Raleigh.

Cady Spencer: Gipsy Danger LOCCENT Technician (along with Tendo Choi), Filipino-American, age 27 from Portland, Oregon.


	34. Somebody's Eyes

_**Author's Notes**__: A thousand apologies for the delay in updating, dear readers! My new job had a particularly-major deadline, and I was working right through last weekend. (Don't become lawyers unless you're prepared for long hours and long stretches without a day off, children!) I'm going to try my hardest to keep updates coming each weekend, but can't promise there won't be some taking longer on occasion. This story is fully-drafted, and its sequel/co-prequel, _Aurora Australis_, is about 2/3 finished. Updates for _Tales From The Front Lines_ will be a bit longer, since that fic is really a series of stand-alone, one-chapter ficlets. Many thanks to you all for your continued reviews and support, and please keep the feedback coming! Remember, there are also previews and discussion available on my Tumblr, _3Fluffies_, linked in my profile, under the tag Generation K._

**Chapter Thirty-Four: Somebody's Eyes**

_October 2018…  
>Lima Shatterdome…<em>

**_The Jaeger Program: A HotBed of Incest?_**

_Oh... my... god. _Without that headline, Raleigh might have assumed this was another fluff piece. Those pictures were all so innocent.

There was one of him and Yancy on the beach in LA, arms around each other's shoulders. There were Bruce and Trev, with Bruce leaning around Trevin to look at something or reach for something... Vic Tunari on Gunnar's back, yelling, just being rowdy... Devi and Suze Hassan, with Dev's arms around her younger sister's neck, grinning for the camera... Scott Hansen, giving his older brother what was probably a big, sloppy raspberry on the cheek, Hercules pulling a hilarious face as he yelled. The cousins who piloted Chrome Brutus, Ilisapie and Zeke, hugging on their launch day, and Silver Lion's pilots, Yan-Jie and Fang, – they were cousins too – snoozing on a cot somewhere like a couple of puppies.

The Wei triplets, posed all fierce and serious like the fighters they'd reportedly been, but physically right up against each other. Carlos and Jordana Chen of Puma Real, they were fraternal twins… and the picture in the very center of that collage between the Chen twins and the Gage twins was Cersei and Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones.

_Har-de-fucking-har._ _Aren't you reporters hilarious? _His blood began to boil... and freeze at the same time. How dare some bastard muckraker imply something like this... but what if, in even one case, it was true?

They'd been warned, back in second term, by Bruce and Trevin themselves that strange things, strange impulses came out in the drift. _"The human imagination can do fucked-up things. If you want to be Rangers, you just have to accept that and not think it makes you some kind of unnatural pervert - or your partner... You have to learn not to judge." _

Those had been warnings well-taken and sometimes there were... moments. Moments where _something _whispered in the drift, something that was wrong and messed-up and it was so, so hard not to slam up the walls that would break the handshake. Early in full drift training, those had been the moments they'd needed the buckets next to the rig, stumbling out of the simulator avoiding each other's eyes, mortified and revolted and trying to fathom how they could possibly make it _stop. _

It had never stopped. That was the bottom line of what the Gages had warned; strange things came up in the drift and always would. It had gotten easier; Raleigh and Yancy had learned to let it float by, to stop cringing and trying to hide or turn away from it, just let it go and keep focused and refocus on their job.

And yet things had changed between them, the Becket brothers. They touched more than they ever had before, first those fierce, desperate hugs after stressful drifts. Then had come combat and drift shock, hanging on to each other for dear life and sharing a bed because not being in physical contact felt like drowning. A kiss on top of the head, a hand holding his when he hurt, fingers running through his hair - dammit, it _wasn't _like this stupid headline said, it _wasn't..._

But what if people thought it was?

They'd been drifting so long, spent all their time around people who knew about drifting. They'd let their guard down. A couple of years ago, they'd have been self-conscious of cuddling in public, or even in private. All that had just... stopped. All the Rangers seemed to be that way. Looking at those pictures, there wasn't a single pose between any of the pilot pairs that Raleigh and Yancy hadn't been in. Or Bruce and Trevin, Vic and Gunnar, or Devi and Suze, for that matter.

Someone moved closer to them; Raleigh blinked and became aware of his surroundings again. Carolina had a hand under Yancy's chin, lifting it to make him meet her eyes. "Don't you hang your head, Yancy Becket. Or you, Raleigh. The same goes for the two of you," she admonished the Gages, who looked no less dazed than Raleigh felt.

"It's not true," Yancy mumbled.

"Hell, of course, it isn't," Romeo's PR liaison said. What was his name? Darrell something. "That whole article is nothing but insinuations. If they had any facts, we'd know. They don't. Rangers are physically demonstrative, and somebody decided to create a scandal."

"We didn't think," one of the twins admitted. "How other people would look at it - "

" - Gentlemen." Pentecost stood up. Raleigh cringed, but although the Marshall looked a tad exasperated, his words surprised them all. "I haven't called you in to reprimand you. On the contrary - you've done _nothing _wrong." Raleigh couldn't keep the surprise off his face. "This is going to be unpleasant, and the entire Corps has to deal with the fallout, but it is in no way your fault."

"Thanks," Trevin murmured, and shot Raleigh and Yancy a weak smile. "So... what can we do? If anything."

Carolina smirked. "Well, I'm afraid punching the reporters in the face is still frowned upon."

A laugh burst out of Raleigh. Amazing by itself, since a few seconds ago he hadn't felt like he could ever laugh at anything again. But the PR reps were laughing too, the twins and Yancy were starting to grin, and even Pentecost had cracked a smile.

Darrell winked at Carolina. "We're gonna be giving that lecture a _lot _around here for the next few weeks, not just to you." He went on more seriously to the four Rangers. "Your crews are going to be furious, your fellow unrelated Rangers are going to be outraged, and understand this: the majority of the public will be disgusted, not with you but with the authors of this trash."

"Amazon's pilots are being informed now; the next step will be the crews," said Carolina, to Pentecost as much as to them. "We'll have to hold some training sessions, make sure no one is caught by surprise."

Yancy was looking at the article again. "It says... they have sources. They quote people 'in the PPDC.'"

Raleigh's stomach lurched, and the other sobered again. "It may be true, it may not," said Pentecost. "We will find out."

"Don't let bullshit like this make you distrust people," Bruce told him. "It happens. It's happened in the military before. Paparazzi, they have all kinds of sneaky shit they pull. Maybe they got a quote from someone, but it might've still been innocent. Just an offhand comment, 'aww, the siblings are so cuddly,' or 'the drift is weird and creepy' - remember your ghost handshake? We all talk about that. We let our guard down. Reporters distort things, mix and match, or just make it up if they don't get the angle _they _want to sell."

_Like with Nikki Harris, _Raleigh mused, starting to relax again. _We danced, we hooked up a few times, just casual, not even exclusive, and the press said I was her boyfriend, she was cheating on me and getting investigated for misconduct. _

Yancy wasn't completely convinced. "What if someone did... from inside the Corps?"

Pentecost's eyes went dark and hard as if they were talking about the best way to slice and dice a kaiju. "Then we will deal with those persons."

* * *

><p>Yancy thought it really must've sucked for the pilots of Echo Saber, who was launching from Nagasaki right as the shit hit the fan about the incest accusations. Japan's newest Rangers were sisters: Ami and Rena Tanaka, four years apart in age.<p>

A lot of the Rangers kept to their bases as the story broke, able to hide behind the launch preparations and the brief window for Jaeger movement. But, naturally, some of the media muckrakers insisted this was only further evidence of _somebody's _guilt.

_And it could only be guilt that makes any of us not bloody WANT to field questions about whether we've been diddling our siblings, _Devi Hassan told him over IM during a chess game. _Herc's words, actually. For once I think even Scott is shocked._

They spent a lot of time fuming and commiserating with their comrades as the story broke. "Did you hear where that picture of the Silver Lion guys came from?" Cady Spencer told them. "Admiral Yamamoto's son."

"What?! Are you kidding?"

Tendo was pacing around the lounge fiddling with the table map. "He didn't even mean anything by it. Just saw his pilots being cute, napping during a long alert, took a picture on his phone, put it on Facebook. Damn it, you know, I almost did that after Yamarashi!"

"Then why's he getting reprimanded?" Raleigh protested.

"'Unauthorized publication.' It is against the rules," Brandon Pines sighed. "This is the reason. I'm sure he feels horrible."

Chloe Warner called her brother from Hawaii, completely hysterical, to report that somebody had pointed the finger at her as being one of the sources. Christian was nervous as hell when he approached Yancy and Raleigh to tell them. "She _didn't, _guys. You know Chlo, we all know her, she never let anybody go there! She'd never say something like that to someone she couldn't trust, let alone to a stranger or a reporter!"

It took them about thirty seconds to reach a consensus on what to do. "I believe you, man. Get her on the phone; we'll talk to her," Yancy said. Raleigh nodded firmly.

It took both of them and Carolina _and_ the Gages to talk Chloe down. "I don't even use Facebook!" she sobbed on the vidcomm.

"Chlo, Chlo, breathe!" they all exclaimed. It was pretty shocking in its own right; Chloe was always so level-headed and contained.

Yancy was seething, but not at her. How dare those bastards do this to people? "Listen," he said urgently, smacking the webcam directly as if he could reach through and shake her. "We know. We believe you. It's okay."

Carolina nodded. "All the liaisons are receiving reports on the investigation, Chloe. Someone said that a source came from K-Watch, so they are pulling _everyone's _records, not just yours."

"I did drift testing. That's what the investigators said," she muttered, wiping her face, but finally starting to calm down.

"Almost half of K-Watch's employees came out of the Academy, and even more in the other departments. Maybe there's a real leak, but more likely, someone just said, 'hey, drifting was kind of creepy,'" Bruce told her. "We've all said things like that."

"We're not going to believe a 'mole' claim about any of our people unless there's a serious smoking gun," Yancy confirmed. "We trust you. We trust Chris, we trust everybody else who came out of 2016-B. We went through too much together, and we'll get through this too. It'll be okay."

* * *

><p>They could console themselves with the awareness that although the mainstream media outlets did pick the story up, it was more in the guise of exclaiming over how very inappropriate it was. "This way they get the sensationalism while disclaiming the actual sensationalists," Carolina snorted. "Typical."<p>

But the outpouring of public support for the Rangers and outrage over the "libel" was nice. Bruce and Trevin decided to dare the actual discussion of drifting with family, and everyone crowded around televisions all around the Pacific when they went on the air.

"_Yes, it's true, people who drift are very physical. That's a direct result, it's actually therapeutic. After being mentally connected, you come out of the drift disoriented. Touching physically sort of... brings reality back_."

The interviewer, vetted within an inch of her life by PR, was cautious and sensitive. "_Is it true that if one of you is hurt, the other feels it?_"

"_It's always true when we're in the Jaeger or the simulator. After actual combat, when the adrenaline is at its peak, you can get drift shock. That's where you really can't focus on the real world because your mind is still floating around in it_."

They were casual about it, as if mind-melding was the most normal thing in the world, but people responded to that. "There's a reason they were an easy public relations assignment," Carolina observed. "Bruce and Trevin have been around; they understand how people think. They also know how to bend the truth."

The interviewer did ask some probing questions. "_Have you ever... _seen _anything in the drift that is sexual?_"

"_Sure. Have you ever walked in on somebody? Awkward stuff happens_," said Trevin with a shrug.

Bruce laughed and thumped him. "_Not that it's not embarrassing as hell, but you don't _have _to be traumatized. We're adults. Just 'oops, my bad,' and turn away_."

Everyone who had ever drifted full-on knew that it was far, far more complicated. But Yancy realized that no one who had ever drifted full-on would contradict what the Gages were saying - and the public would believe the twins. It was a simple, logical explanation for something that, in reality, was damn near impossible to explain - and they really shouldn't have to explain it to begin with, because it was nobody's damn business!

"_Is it different for the Rangers who aren't related, in a romantic relationship?_"

"_It must be. You'd have to ask them, though, we've never drifted with anyone but each other. Everyone gets closer as Rangers, but not only because of the drift. Whenever you're partners, depending on each other, you have to trust. You have to know each other_."

Finally, the interviewer did delicately Go There. "_So do you believe there is _any _truth to the rumors in that story?_"

The answer was one word, dead-serious, with complete conviction: "_No._"

Police officers, plane co-pilots, other team workers in other industries bombarded the media with tweets and Facebook posts and opinion letters in support of the Rangers.

_My partner and I have been patrolling this community for eleven years! We're best friends, but that doesn't make it creepy!_

_If you can't trust the other guy helping load artillery with you, who can you trust? The authors of that slander should be fired!_

_Thanks for implying I'm a pervert because my sister and I are a pro dancing couple, assholes!_

The PPDC ended up not suing over the misuse of the pictures of the Rangers - but the producers of Game of Thrones _did_ sue over unauthorized use of their photo. Even George R. R. Martin came down on the Rangers' side. "_It's FICTION, you morons!_"

"Man, when that author says you're fucked up, you _know _it's bad!" Cady Spencer hooted.

While most of the related teams had been keeping a low profile, dreading the possibility of questions, some of the Ranger pairs just didn't give a damn. Like Tanisha and Caleb. Some reporter actually had the balls to shove his microphone in Tanisha's face and ask if she'd ever seen any signs of incest between the sibling pilots. Tanisha just stared him down, and finally drawled out, "_You are one sick puppy_."

She made the TV Tropes "Crowning Moment of Awesome" Real Life example list right under Buzz Aldrin belting the moon landing conspiracy theorist. "Yance, I wanna be like Tani when I grow up!" Raleigh sighed.

"Don't we all, kiddo. Don't we all." Yancy slung an arm around his neck and ruffled his hair, leaning against him without either of them being self-conscious anymore.

* * *

><p>The experienced public relations crew had warned that the inflammatory incest article was merely a "threshold moment" for the Corps, and that more invasions of privacy and affronts to decency would follow. Stacker had been around long enough to know they were right.<p>

He wasn't surprised by the next tack that the muckrakers and conspiracy theorists took - redoubling their efforts to dig up dirt on the Rangers' families. Nor was it just the Rangers; any relative of Corps personnel was fair game, the more high-ranking, the better.

Carolina Olivares once again sounded the warning, or rather, brought the warning from Los Angeles where Yankee Star's liaison had sent up the flag. "Marshall, would you speak with Ranger Davis? There's been a new security breach concerning her family, and I thought you might be able to advise her."

Olivares knew about Mako. Stacker wasn't troubled by that; he knew immediately what help she thought he could give, and he was glad to offer it. Tanisha Davis was as composed as ever when he connected to her on the video conference. "Ranger Davis."

"Marshall. Mrs. Olivares suggested I speak to you about my problem on a secure line." She didn't admit outright that she didn't have a clue why, but she trusted her crew's PR rep and probably Olivares too.

He nodded. "I'm told there's been a security breach concerning your family."

"Yes, sir." Only a small change in her tone betrayed the rage she undoubtedly felt. "They've started staking out my son's school, and my mother thinks they know where they live. His teachers are trying to protect him, but I'm not sure they can. It's not like they get a lot of high profile people there."

"I understand. I know you would rather have him live near you and your family's home, but you may have to move him to a more secure location."

"I know. Mrs. Olivares thought... you could recommend something."

"I can." He stepped off the ledge without hesitating. Tanisha Davis was trusting him with her greatest treasure, and deserved to know she was being met halfway. "My daughter is thirteen." Davis's eyebrows shot up, to his amusement. "The Corps has an arrangement with a secured K-12 boarding school in central Pennsylvania. The security is excellent for the physical and online campus, and the costs are covered by your benefits. Your son will be safe there, and his identity will not be shared. Even my daughter doesn't know which of her classmates are related to Rangers."

She mulled over that, and he knew her dilemma all too well. "That's a long way," she murmured.

"It is, but there are secured channels of contact that I use regularly. And it's also a long way from anywhere that a kaiju will set foot even if all the Jaegers stop working tomorrow." That wasn't something he would admit to anyone outside this conversation. But this wasn't the first such conversation he'd had, nor would it be the last. "I'll send you a secured transmission of the information, including their contact information. You'll want to think about it."

"Thank you, Marshall." It came from the heart.

After he ended the call with Davis, he contemplated his interface for a few minutes, then put in another call to Sydney. "Afternoon, Marshall! Or, I guess evening in your case," said Herc Hansen. "More Game of Thrones fallout?"

"Not quite, but I wanted to pass along a warning. The dodgy ones are turning their attention to Rangers' children again."

Herc's entire bearing changed. He stared off into the distance and muttered, "Damn."

"Is he still on-base with you?" Stacker had already urged Hansen to get his son into a secure school, but so far, the man had refused. Granted, the Dome itself was about as secure from media intrusion as they could get, but PPDC Psych felt that the environment wasn't healthy for a traumatized teen _or _his Ranger father.

"Yeah, the fuckers sniff around the fence, but Chuck doesn't go near them." Herc visibly braced himself for the same old argument. "I'm not doing it. Not as long as I've got a choice. Has it come down to that?"

"No. No one's ordering you to do anything. You know my position, not just as a Marshall." _As a father. Do you think it's easy knowing she's thousands of miles away?_ _I've only known her for two years. I thought I didn't have a paternal bone in my body before that, but now the sun rises and sets with her. _

Herc sighed and shut his eyes. "Yeah, I know. I'm not judging you or any of the others who've made a different call. Maybe you are the decent ones. Definitely the sensible ones. Stacker, I _can't_."

Was it different for Herc Hansen? Probably. Stacker knew the story of Sydney; everyone did. Scott Hansen was a playboy and gambler, a hooligan that even three years of drift hadn't straightened out, but he snarled like a rabid dog when anyone questioned his brother's priorities. "_You all stand there in your bunkers giving orders from ten thousand miles away, but don't tell him he's not allowed to keep someone to fight for!_"

Some personnel kept their children on-base at the Domes or Academy housing, just a handful here and there, but most had made the same call as Stacker and Tanisha. Herc Hansen was definitely the only Ranger trying to raise a child on-site. But his brother wasn't wrong. Who the hell were the commanders to tell him to send the boy away? Would Chuck be safer? Maybe. Maybe not. Would Hansen be any less distracted by thoughts of him? Definitely not.

"I understand, just thought you should be warned. You know you have our full support no matter where he is. If anyone targets him, we'll make them answer for it."

In the mess hall that evening, he heard a murmured conversation between Yancy Becket and Olivares. "D'you... know if my sister's okay?"

"I know where she is. She changed her name before your launch, and that's... probably not a bad thing. I had the records sealed so the vultures can't track her down so easily, though she doesn't know that."

"Thanks."

"Do you want to contact her, Yancy? I can help if you do."

There was a long silence. Finally, the elder Becket murmured, "No. She's better off."

* * *

><p><em>November 6, 2018…<br>J-Tech Southern Hemisphere Assembly Facility, Sao Paulo, Brazil…_

Raleigh and Yancy paid a visit to Gipsy in early November. "She's looking great, sir," Yancy told the Chief Engineer, Gabe Morais.

"She's a beautiful lady," Morais replied, smiling. "We're going to miss her. The crews call her Elsa the Snow Queen."

Raleigh exchanged a grin with Yancy, and decided not to point out that Frozen was set in Scandinavia, not Alaska. "Better Elsa than Sarah, right?" he murmured in Yancy's ear. His brother chuckled. "So what's next?"

"She and Diablo Intercept will trade places, so we can examine Diablo and Dr. Schoenfeld can make sure we've done well by Gipsy. You'll test her on the Proving Grounds back in Anchorage, her home turf. After the next engagement, command will decide who stays where."

"How soon can we take her home?"

"We're very close to finishing final checks, so we should have her ready for lift before this orange alert, barring any emergencies - "

- the sirens went off. This was Sao Paulo, closer to the Atlantic Ocean than the Pacific, but it was still a PPDC base. Even so, all the personnel just stared at each other, including Raleigh and Yancy. Morais blinked, bemused, and finished, "An emergency such as an extremely early Breach event."

"I think you jinxed us, _Chefe_!" laughed one of the other engineers.

Yancy pulled out his phone and checked the date. "Gotta be a false alarm." It had only been nine weeks!

_ATTENTION. ATTENTION. YELLOW ALERT. MOVEMENT IN THE BREACH._

But then, someone's voice came over the coms. "_This is not a drill! Attention, personnel, this is _not_ a drill! Movement in the Breach!_"

"Shit!" Raleigh looked at his brother. "Can we even get back to Lima?"

"Gipsy's here," Yancy sighed. He was right. Either way, this was another attack they'd be sitting out. Within ten minutes, they had a message from Pentecost. "He says stay put."

Raleigh had to chuckle when he got the same message, but an added PS text that was apparently for him alone: _And I mean it, Ranger. _

He supposed he deserved that. He texted back: _Understood, sir. _

The response to Yellow Alert was a lot less dramatic in Sao Paulo than it was in the Shatterdomes, though the Engineers still had jobs to do, and work on their current projects stopped. "Come with me, Rangers. I'll give you the grand tour of alert operations for Engineering," said Morais. He winked at them. "And I have orders to sit on you if you try to leave."

They had to laugh. Raleigh supposed he deserved that too.

It really was a kaiju, the earliest attack on record. Codenamed Raythe, Category III. Sao Paulo Assembly Facility and K-Science Laboratories was located near the headquarters of Embraer, a big aerospace engineering company that had built planes and space vehicles before K-Day. It was smaller than Kodiak's facility, but Diablo Intercept, Solar Prophet and Amazon Delta had all been built here, and two of the three had now been proven against the kaiju.

Their crews were a lot like the crowd in Anchorage; brilliant, enthusiastic, and delightfully nerdy. With an alert in progress, they cleared projects out of the repair bays and pulled up the schematics of all the Jaegers currently in service, and crowded around the monitors. All the K-Science crews were examining the data about all the previous kaiju. One of them came over from the labs looking for Raleigh and Yancy.

"My wife told me you were here. I'm Victor Faison."

"Nice to meet you, Doctor!" They'd seen his name on a lot of K-Science reports, but hadn't met him until now. Raleigh grinned. "I can guess what she told you."

"Vic, please, as long as you don't confuse me with Tunari." Dr. Faison's husband was a lot more outgoing than she was, and he grinned easily back. "She said you're almost as obnoxious as the Gages."

Yancy snorted and ruffled Raleigh's hair. "Dunno, Doc. This one is a lot worse."

They hung out with him and Morais and the other senior officers for much of the alert. "I was in Seattle when Karloff drew a beat on us," Vic told them.

"We were in Anchorage. Did you go or stay?"

"We went, but it was messy, trying to break down our labs and get our data and samples packed up. I was surprised when Brazil chipped in so much funding and manpower."

"It's not just bragging rights," said Morais. "To the north or the south, it's only a hop, skip and a jump from the Pacific to us. If the kaiju aren't contained, they will find their way to us. Argentina feels the same."

The bogey went almost due north, heading towards Japan again. "Can't the poor bastards catch a break?!" one of the other engineers muttered. "Crap, Coyote's clear, but Tidal Dragon's down, Tacit Ronin's still under repair in Anchorage, and Echo Saber's only been on-site for eight days!"

"There's a very good reason they've got two Shatterdomes," Yancy remarked. "And that deal with China and Russia."

China deployed Crimson Typhoon to Tokyo and Silver Lion to Hokkaido. "Coyote Tango's going to Sendai, Echo Saber to Misawa. The Russians are putting all three of theirs along the Kuril Islands."

"Nice perimeter," Raleigh mused, tracing a finger over the map.

There were high winds and interference that prevented the usual real-time broadcast from the choppers, and even the radio transmissions were spotty. Raythe passed most of Japan by, then Crimson Typhoon and Silver Lion were deployed to the eastern-most points of Hokkaido.

Even as far inland as they were, it was hard to sleep easily, and Raleigh and Yancy made use of the cots spread around the war rooms. Sao Paulo had rotating crews of "remote engineers" who could look at damage reports from an engagement, and an alert woke everybody up the next morning.

"Silver Lion's hit!"

"Do we have a transmission?"

"Figures, the first time Typhoon gets action and we can't watch."

"Typhoon wasn't deployed - wait, now she is. I didn't think Lion had made contact!"

"Shut up, shut up, I'm getting something!" A couple of the engineers were tapping into the local channels in Hokkaido. "_Jodame_. Not good." Raleigh shook Yancy's shoulder, and his brother sat up as one of the guys pressed his headset to his ears and shot them all a grim look. "It's a mayday."

"_Fuck,_" Yancy hissed.

The actual defeat of Raythe was anti-climactic. Cherno Alpha took it down somewhere along the chain of islands to the northeast of Hokkaido after it ran from Crimson Typhoon, but the radio contact was so full of static that nobody in Sao Paulo could make out what anyone was saying up there. Everyone was anxiously waiting for word on what had happened to Silver Lion, but they all breathed a little easier once Hong Kong's commander officially confirmed that the pilots had been rescued.

"Mind if I hitch a ride back to Lima with you, Rangers?" Vic Faison asked.

"Be our guests!"

The K-Science crews were stoked. "It's probably bad form, but we were hoping one of these guys would head north during the winter. Now it'll be easy to keep his carcass on ice!"

* * *

><p><em>November 10, 2018…<br>Lima Shatterdome…_

Raythe changed more than just schedules. The event was another "low-casualty attack," celebrated and praised in the public eye. But within the Jaeger Program, it was different. The pilots of Silver Lion died seventy-two hours after the mayday call, along with nearly everyone on their drop crew. That brought all intra-PPDC partying to an abrupt halt.

Even before the memorial services began, Stacker got a phone call from Tamsin. "I'm afraid our bad news is coming in threes, Stacks. Kaori Jessop just died."

_Damn it. _"Oh, Tam. Where's Duc?"

"He's here. Do you think you could come?"

"I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Don't bring Mako, love, not for this. After, maybe for Christmas, but not this."

Before he departed Lima, Tendo Choi and Cady Spencer asked for another private meeting. This time, it wasn't about trying to help their on-base buddies, and the subject was serious as a heart attack. "Sir, you know we're working on the Engagement Investigation? We've been comparing the instrument reports to the K-Watch tags."

_Oh, God. _He had already harbored some suspicions about the timing of that mayday. Now Spencer and Choi confirmed them. "Go on."

The two men exchanged anxious glances and Choi lowered his voice still more. "Silver Lion _didn't _engage Raythe. The last instrument readings we have are forty seconds after the handshake completed. He was still in the process of calibrating, and Raythe was still forty miles away when the mayday went out. I don't… sir, the instruments picked up massive electrical discharges, but it wasn't lightning. The Jump Hawks never reported the drop complete either – by the timing of the mayday, even if they had to rush due to the weather, they would still have been carrying Silver Lion."

There were very disturbing blanks in the material provided to the investigators. A Mark-2 Jaeger had exploded, and her support choppers had all crashed from a massive power surge. Six months ago, another Mark-2 had experienced a power surge in her conn-pod that had injured her pilots and the support crew.

He was impressed to discover that Choi had made that connection too. "You know there was an electrical incident with Yankee Star earlier this year? She wasn't at full power when it happened; the drop was still in progress. If she'd been fully online…"

Stacker nodded grimly. "I rather doubt it's a case of foul play, if that's your concern. But it does suit some people to declare this a glorious death in combat rather than a tragic accident that needs public scrutiny."

"Thirty-two people died without the kaiju ever getting near them," murmured Spencer. "Can we do anything?"

"Continue with your investigation as usual, but make a personal copy of your data." He handed them a set of non-network flash drives. "Submit it to me also as usual. If there is a hue and cry to be raised, I'll raise it." _Don't worry, gentlemen. The buck doesn't stop with you, as the Americans would say. _

The investigation within the PPDC did proceed, and all of the lower-level staff reached the same conclusion: something had gone wrong with Silver Lion. A massive malfunction had spiked electricity through her conn-pod and her drop gear, fatally injuring her pilots and the chopper crews. Between the electrocution and the crash of the still-airborne Jaeger, no eyewitnesses lived to tell the tale. Four of the Shatterdome commanders, including Stacker and Admiral Yamamoto, whose son had died in the accident, pushed for it to be declared openly. The other four insisted there wasn't positive proof, and Silver Lion's pilots and drop crews should be "properly honored" by being declared killed in action doing battle with Raythe.

Secretary General Krieger made the final call: Silver Lion was declared destroyed in combat.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon: **__Even before Knifehead, the Jaeger Program took some brutal blows. Our heroes mourn another Mark-1 pilot, and quietly wonder at the unanswered questions surrounding Kaori's death and the death of Silver Lion's pilots - and the next movement in the Breach brings a battle that pushes some of our heroes to their limits in __**Chapter Thirty-Five: Hardship.**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative, Mexican-American, mid-60s, crew den mother.

Darrell Sullivan: Romeo Blue's Public Relations Representative, African-American, late-30s.

Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, late 20s, African-American from Atlanta, GA, attended academy with Beckets and his sister, Chloe, who is now in K-Watch.

Chloe Warner: K-Watch worker in Honolulu, transferred after she and her brother Christian failed to become Rangers at Academy. Age 25.

Cady Spencer: Gipsy Danger LOCCENT Technician (along with Tendo Choi), Filipino-American, age 27 from Portland, Oregon.

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Rangers, pilots of Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark-3. First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 27 and 25, graduated Jaeger Academy in the same class as the Beckets.

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.

Yan-Jie Lim and Fang Lao: Silver Lion: Chinese air force pilots in their late 20s, first cousins.

Chief Engineer Gabriel Morais: Senior J-Tech engineer in the Southern Hemisphere, also one of the senior Jaeger deployment strategists. Mid-50s, retired Brazilian Air Force officer.


	35. Hardship

_**Author's Note:**__ Many thanks for your patience, dear readers! You can probably assume that updates will be coming every two weeks in general from now on. The hours I'm putting in at my new job are incredibly long, and sadly it's not looking like it's going to let up for awhile. If I get a respite, I'll try to post updates sooner. Please keep the reviews coming, they're a very welcome respite for me from legal mind-bending all the time! The latest chapter of my missing moments/Shatterdome Shenanigans story, Tales From The Front Lines, is also up!_

**Chapter Thirty-Five: Hardship**

_December 2018…  
>Lima Shatterdome…<em>

It was a strange, dissonant Thanksgiving for the Americans in the Jaeger Program, seeing the world around them celebrating and glorifying another decisive win against the kaiju, while they were mourning three more Rangers and several dozen support crew. Worse were the undercurrents, the whispers that Silver Lion hadn't actually gone down in combat, but that something had gone _wrong._

There was also Kaori Jessop's death. Had it really been breast cancer, just missed until it was too late when all the Rangers went through such constant, exhaustive tests and scans?

Maybe the policy changes that followed were just part of the ever-changing, ever-developing and expanding book of experience in this strange new world of the Kaiju War. Or maybe this was as close to learning from mistakes as the brass would let them get.

All the Mark-2's were grounded for a massive review of their systems, and the radiation review of all the nuclear Jaegers continued. Shatterdome coverage rules were changed, as were the alert schedules, since Raythe had shown her ugly face even before orange alert.

K-Science actually had some theoretical gender worked out on the things, which lightened the mood at last and sparked some hilarious late night television. (_"I'm telling you, Raythe can't have been female – she'd just have asked for directions to Tokyo!"_)

Plans changed for Gipsy Danger too. "We're not going to cart the Jaegers around anymore than we absolutely have to, so instead, Anchorage is coming to you!" Priya Katwal informed them.

Things were a little glum around Lima for the rest of November, especially when Team Romeo and Marshall Pentecost returned from Hawaii, having attended Kaori Jessop's funeral in person. "That's the third Mark-1 Ranger we've lost," Carolina pointed out sadly. "Silver Lion's pilots were also part of that first class. It began with them."

Trying to keep on top of the competition, all the engineering and weaponry industry honchos operating the Sao Paulo Assembly Facility got the Brazilian government to green-light a new Proving Ground outside the city for testing Jaegers in the Southern Hemisphere. So that was where Raleigh and Yancy _finally _got back into Gipsy Danger again. They and Diablo Intercept got the joint honor of being the inaugural users of those grounds, and the Brazilian locals gathered on all the approach roads whenever it was allowed.

Better still, Dr. Schoenfeld's group from Anchorage included another old friend: Lea Franklin, now with a Master's in Electrical Engineering, on track to have a Ph.D. in eighteen more months, and still six months shy of her twentieth birthday. Antwan Ferrier marched his six-foot-six, three-hundred-pound frame up to loom over her and announced to the Brazilian engineers, "This woman intimidates me." Lea just laughed and hugged him.

Most of the Rangers and crews were resigned to not being allowed to set foot off-base much anymore – especially not the ones under Marshall Pentecost's command. However, the stern Briton surprised them all. "I am requiring two deployment-ready teams to be on-base at all times, and the orange level alert will now begin at eight weeks. If your crews can agree amongst yourselves on the leave schedule, you'll be more likely to be accommodated."

The new schedule meant that half of the crews would have to be on-base for Christmas, and the other half for New Year's, and two months after Raythe, nobody would be allowed off-base at all. Bruce and Trevin had a quick, private discussion with the Beckets, and the four of them conceded Christmas to the Khouris and Team Diablo. Neither the Beckets nor the Gages were terribly religious, while Christmas was a big deal for the Ecuadorian and Chilean teams, so it would mean more to them to be with their families.

The Peruvian government was all too happy to hear the PPDC crews would be sticking closer to base for longer periods of time, and offered to cordon off the nearest beach for the personnel. So Team Gipsy and Team Romeo celebrated the holidays in proper Southern Hemisphere style, on the beach in sight of the Shatterdome.

The Gages and Beckets were given leave for New Year's, but while the Gages went back to Monterey for a few days and all of Gipsy's crew had the chance to go home, Raleigh and Yancy didn't. "Home's where Gipsy is," Yancy told their friends cheerfully. Those who were closest to them must have realized what he really meant: there wasn't anyone "back home" for them to visit anymore.

But their dedication impressed those who didn't know, and it did pay off: after weeks of testing and drilling, just as 2019 began, Gipsy and her pilots were finally cleared to return to active duty.

* * *

><p><em>January 20, 2019…<em>

The orange alert had begun now on January 8, 2019, eight weeks after the previous attack, and all crews were recalled to base. Pentecost was a little more tolerant of on-base recreation than before, recognizing the need for personnel to have ways to unwind. He even issued beach passes to small groups at a time for a few hours each day, up until the ten-week point when the new red alert began.

Nobody could claim he was overly cautious, since the next Breach Alarm came in at exactly ten weeks after the last one. It was a Category III, codenamed Hardship, coming in just shy of Yamarashi in terms of water displacement and toxicity reports from K-Watch.

"_He's bipedal, and got some nasty armored blades on the chest and head_," Chloe Warner reported from Hawaii. "_His toxicity readings are coming up shy of the last few, but those plates are going to make up for it. Taking him down is going to be tough – you'll need a big ship on this_."

Worse still, also like Yamarashi, Hardship managed to drop completely off the grid for over a day. "_That actually does give us something, if only by process of elimination_," the Tunaris told them as the Rangers hung out in their Shatterdome war rooms, chatting and Skypeing on the network. "_He'd have been picked up by now if he was aiming for Asia. I'd bet good money it's Lima_."

"Place your bets, ladies and gents!" ordered Antwan, getting snorts and catcalls.

"Ten bucks on Lima!" called the Gages.

"_We're staying with the home team. Ten on Panama!_" announced Steffie.

Nikki Harris was searching the local coastline reports. "I'm not sure if this is related or not, but Concepción just report another big earthquake."

"Huh. Ya think?" Antwan mused.

"This guy even kind of looks like Trespasser. The USGS never did decide if the K-Day quake was actually caused by the Breach or not."

"I'll take it. Ten for Lima," said Raleigh.

"Aw, come on, somebody's gotta bet against their own base, otherwise it's no fun!" protested Yancy.

Raleigh shot him a mock-wounded look. "You'd bet against me, bro?"

"_No, no, the Rangers bet in pairs_," Team Matador urged from Los Angeles. "_We'll put ten dollars on Panama_."

"Heyyy, there you go!" Brandon Pines chimed in, and threw a bill to Antwan. "Ten on LA."

"Traitor, traitor!"

The ones who bet on the favorite won the pool; Hardship was next detected by the buoys and echo sounders off French Polynesia, although luckily, he passed the islands by. There wasn't time for any more goofing off in the Lima Strike Group after that. All the orange alarms sounded, jolting people off their cots and out of their drowsy night watches and sending the western Shatterdomes into pre-deployment mode.

The four teams gathered around the monitors. "Amazon Delta's being dropped to Manta, Ecuador; they'll be covering Ecuador and Columbia's section of the zone," announced Tendo. "Diablo Intercept is going down to Concepción, Chile; Romeo Blue to Valparaiso. And we…are… looks like we're staying put in Lima, defending the home turf, my friends."

Raleigh raised his eyebrows at Yancy, unsure if they should take that as an honor or an insult. Yance looked uncertain too, but Antwan leaned towards them. "Lima's _the _biggest city under this Dome's protection, Becket boys." He nodded to the screen with the enormous map of the South American coastline and the blips that indicated their fellow Jaegers' destinations. "This is strategic and political. Romeo is defending the Santiago region, and Diablo is going to the site of the quake – and their own country. Amazon deploys to the countries that funded her."

That eased their minds a little, though it was hard watching their Dome-mates lifting off from their bays. "You guys take care of yourselves," Yancy called over the coms.

"_We will. Hold down the fort, Gipsy! Gonna be a big day!_" one of the Gages replied.

It was a long day. Nearly twelve hours later, Raleigh and Yancy were dozing in full gear, and all the other members of the Lima Strike Group had safely touched down, but were still yet to initiate handshake. They finally did when the bogey popped onto the spectrometers installed at the Juan Fernández islands off Chile. "Direction is still southeast. Romeo and Diablo are deploying," Marshall Pentecost informed the Dome crews. "Gipsy Danger, remain at ready. Amazon Delta, preparing for liftoff to Antofagasta."

Team Gipsy heaved a collective sigh. "Think we'll see action this time around?" Raleigh mused, trying not to sound sour about it.

"They may run us down there once they know where he's making landfall. But they can't risk exposing Lima. Amazon got stuck on guard duty in Panama City for Grindylow, so it's their turn to get some action," said Yancy, shrugging. "Let's run a circuitry check. It can't be much longer unless he _really _changes direction."

Hardship ran sharply south, intriguing the theorists who had been tracking the shockwaves from Concepción's latest earthquake. "_Diablo Intercept's got this one_," Tendo told them from Gipsy's station at LOCCENT. "_I think Team Romeo's a little disappointed_."

"Valparaiso ain't, I guarantee you," Christian Warner replied. "Poor Concepción, first another big quake, now a damn Category III kaiju. How you doing, Lea?"

"_Fine_," Lea Franklin told him over the com from Gipsy's bay. She sounded confident enough, but Raleigh grimaced at Antwan and some of the others. If Nikki and K-Watch had noticed similarities between this bogey and Trespasser, Lea and the other survivors definitely had. But Lea added, "_I'm looking forward to watching the devil's lash readouts_."

"_Go down to Diablo's bay; I bet they'd let you look over their shoulders_," urged Tendo. Team Gipsy heard an alarm sound from LOCCENT over Tendo's com. "And_, here we go! Target sighted by spotters, incoming to Concepción. ETA, forty minutes. Diablo Intercept and Romeo Blue, fully deployed and ready_."

"That's kind of early for Romeo, isn't it?" muttered Antwan.

"_They're already airborne, should be touching down in Concepción right after Diablo makes contact. They'll be backup for this horny armored freak_."

* * *

><p>They wound up needing serious back-up. Concepción, Chile definitely went on the list of "cities that just can't catch a break," in Tendo and Cady's view. And Hardship wound up being a very aptly-named kaiju.<p>

Diablo Intercept's pilots, Ben Gonzalez and Felipe Jara, were damn good. They met the bastard on the peninsula that rose to the north of the city proper and tore into him with their lash and their missiles, backed up with Romeo's Gatling guns. But he kept coming back, and after four hours, they weren't drawing nearly enough blood.

"_At least the evacuation's going well_," the on-site strike troopers reported. "_This population knows not to mess around with natural disasters_."

"Or unnatural ones," muttered Cady, as the devil's lash wrapped around Hardship's neck again. The monster roared, but it seemed more like anger than pain. He looked over his shoulder at Diablo's LOCCENT station and Marshall Pentecost, then made a face at Tendo.

Yeah, they might not have been drift compatible enough to pilot a Jaeger, but Tendo knew what he was thinking. "Sir, I think they need back-up to get in there and get physical," he said. Romeo weighed almost twice as much as Diablo. He might be able to overwhelm the bastard.

Pentecost nodded without taking long to think about it, and even Diablo's mission controllers weren't surprised. "Agreed. Amazon Delta, what's your ETA?"

"_Eight hours, sir_."

"Copy that. Diablo, damage report?"

The Rangers were breathing heavily as they scrambled to cut Hardship off again, at the cost of smashing up one of the coastal fishing towns, but they sounded okay. "_Superficial, sir, but this kaiju's not slowing down either_."

"Let's mix it up. Let Romeo take point when he joins you, see if the two of you can break through that armor. Romeo Blue, move in."

"_Copy that_."

One thing for Ben Gonzalez and Felipe Jara, they weren't as full of it as some of the other pilots. _As my boys can be, _Tendo thought with a wry smile. Or at least, Ben and Felipe didn't let on whether they were miffed about back-up being called in. They'd been together on a Chilean submarine for years before K-Day, so they had experience with being part of a diverse team.

But Hardship decided to mix it up too. The bastard took a flying leap off a cliff into the ocean, dodging lash and mortars, and headed for the mainland. "_Fuck, he's running_!"

"Gipsy Danger lift crew, get her to Concepción."

Tendo slapped the deployment alerts at his station as Cady grabbed the com. "Gipsy Danger, this is LOCCENT. We're deploying immediately. Hawk crews, prepare for liftoff."

"Get the boys into the conn-pod, pronto, suit crew!" Tendo ordered, and saw the pod doors opening even before he finished the sentence. But his heart was starting to sink. Even as fast as those Jump hawks could fly, it would be close to twelve hours to get Gipsy from Lima to Concepción, and still close to eight before Amazon arrived. If Romeo and Diablo couldn't get on top of this bastard in a hurry, they were going to be in serious trouble.

"I've got Marshall Quijano on the line from Panama, sir. She wants to know if you want Hydra Corinthian to start for Lima," said someone.

"It can't hurt."

Romeo was one of the slowest Jaegers, but they had a good read of their opponent, and were getting into position to cut Hardship off before Gipsy was even off the ground. The hours started to drag again, but they were all breathing easier.

Then it all went to hell. Diablo snagged the kaiju in his lash again, but Hardship had had enough of getting zapped. He gnawed on the thing, sparks flying and kaiju blue spraying, then lunged back towards the Jaeger. Felipe and Ben's bellows and curses rang through LOCCENT, as Tendo and Cady tried to hiss a report of what was happening to the airborne Gipsy. They were still too far away for their instruments to give a good visual.

"Shit!"

"_We can't see more than the damn blips, Tendo, what's going on?!_" demanded Yancy.

"Fucker's taking the offensive on Diablo Intercept… Romeo's opening up the Gatling on him again, but he's got his back to them. _Dammit! _He's closing on them!"

"This is gonna be a mayday," Cady muttered as Hardship lunged for Diablo's upper body, overbalancing the Jaeger backwards. "Oh, shit. Shit."

On Diablo's com, they could hear Felipe and Ben yelling. Then one of them was screaming, and red lights and alarms were blaring at Diablo's station.

"_Lift crew, where the hell are we?_" Now Yancy sounded more dull. Gipsy at least had a voice comm link to the other Jaegers. They could hear what was going on.

"_Still ten hours, sir, and believe me, we're at top speed_."

"_Tendo, can we get permission for the R&R crews to go ahead?_" Raleigh asked.

"Hang on… Romeo's on them – wait…" _Come on, Gages, come on, give us a miracle here! _

They couldn't hear Felipe and Ben anymore, but the Diabo's conn-pod still had two sets of viral signs. Romeo caught up and bodily hauled Hardship by shoulder and tail off their partner and hurled him onto the beach. "_Lager, Chicha, get to the pilots. We'll hold him!_" one of the twins ordered. They maneuvered around Diablo and charged after the kaiju, putting themselves between him and his prey.

_"__This is Lager Two, we're descending now!_"One of Romeo's R&R choppers was already over the stricken Jaeger.

"I've got vital signs," breathed someone at Diablo's station. "They're alive, at least. The conn-pod is compromised – the right side is partially collapsed. Lager Two, enter on the left shoulder. The right hatch is probably inaccessible."

"_Copy that, LOCCENT!_"

"Sir?" Tendo said quickly to Pentecost. "Gipsy's R&R team can get there faster than the lift crew; pilots are asking permission to release them."

Pentecost paused, eyeing the displays, then stepped over to Tendo's com. "Gipsy Danger, this is Marshall Stacker Pentecost. You have permission to release two of your R&R teams to assist in Concepción. I want two on your shoulders when you arrive."

_"__Copy that, sir,_" said Yancy. _"Whiskey Alpha and Beta, you're clear to move ahead to Concepción, top speed. Gamma and Delta, stay with us._" Two of Gipsy's support choppers went roaring ahead of the group surrounding Gipsy and her lift hawks.

It would still take Alpha and Beta upwards of eight hours to get there, and if Romeo couldn't stop Hardship, there might not be much left.

Bruce and Trevin were putting everything they had into driving the kaiju away from Diablo and the rescue crews. Tendo pulled his rosary out of his pocket with one hand, and alternated between monitoring Gipsy, monitoring the scene in Concepcion, and bead to chain to bead, silent prayers in his head. It couldn't hurt. He knew he wasn't the only one doing it. Down on the catwalks opposite Diablo's bay, he could see a lot of the crew clustered around the monitors and the speakers, holding hands. That wasn't just camaraderie and anxiety; there were a lot of Catholics in Diablo's South American crowd.

Sometimes they joked about it: praying for Diablo. Team Diablo and Team Amazon started deployment with prayers; Team Gipsy had an elaborate dap that Antwan had taught them, declaring a simple fist-bump was insufficient. Team Romeo had an army chant; Team Yankee had a Marine one. Team Hydra had the group clap and chant from Steph and Kennedy's swim team days (in defiance of their popular image as cheerleaders).

_"This is Rescue/Recovery Lager Two; we're reached the pilots. Starting emergency treatment; we'll need to evacuate them immediately._"

So Ben and Felipe were alive, but... _Come on, guys, pull through this. _

_"LOCCENT, this is Chicha One. We're picking up radiation spikes near Diablo. He's face-down, but the reactor may be damaged._"

"Can you get the pilots out of there without ground aid?" asked Pentecost.

"_I think so, sir. We're still inside the safety band inside the pod."_

"Copy that. Rescue/Recovery, tell the local first responders to clear out until we get the nuclear crew in there, and get yourselves away from Diablo as soon as you can."

_"LOCCENT, this is Amazon Delta. We're hitting some heavy weather north of Valparaiso! ETA six hours."_

"Dammit," muttered Tendo, and he heard Raleigh or Yancy echo it in Gipsy's pod. At this rate, Romeo would be fighting Hardship alone all night. No drift could last forever, not even one as strong and stable as the Gage twins'. If they couldn't take this bastard down, how long could they hold out?

"_How long since their handshake?_" asked Raleigh, apparently thinking along the same lines.

"Almost nine hours. I don't even know how long they can go."

The night wound on, and the battle raged through the streets of Concepción and its surrounding towns and hills. Romeo's R&R crew managed to get Ben and Felipe out of the conn-pod and fled for Santiago. Diablo's remaining support teams got to work tailing Romeo and Hardship and trying to assist people caught in their path.

"_We have a nuclear emergency building here,_" the first cleanup specialists reported. _"We need everything evacuated for a ten-mile radius, including the shelters._"

"So, now we have an earthquake, a kaiju, and a crashed Jaeger with a leaking reactor. Concepción is definitely moving down on the real estate market," muttered Tendo.

"I know, right?" Cady sighed, handing him a refilled cup of coffee. "Christ, we knew we couldn't win 'em all without setbacks, but still… this blows."

"It really, really does."

"ROMEO, WATCH IT!" Among some of Concepcion's tallest buildings, Romeo and Hardship had closed again, and everyone in LOCCENT let out shouts of horror as the kaiju leapt onto the Jaeger. It was a repeat of the maneuver that had taken down Diablo. Tendo heard shouts and even screams from the watchers down in the bays -

- thank God for Romeo's chest fin, and for the spiny armor on Hardship's own front. He couldn't get a good enough grip on Romeo's head, and Bruce and Trevin, panting and snarling, managed to throw him off.

"They're okay, they're okay," Cady hissed into his headset for Gipsy's benefit. "He went for the pod, but they knocked him off - "

"_We're all right_," the twins confirmed in unison. An hour before, even as they fought, they'd started speaking and moving in a level of synch that was astonishing even by Ranger standards.

"I've never seen them so completely lined up, and that's really saying something," one of their LOCCENT techs was reporting.

But Marshall Pentecost was in contact with Anchorage, and reportedly on a direct line with Dr. Lightcap. "It can only break down from here," he muttered. "We're running out of time."

The Gages seemed to know it. They'd abandoned most of their efforts at keeping the kaiju out of the city and preventing damage, and were now just hacking at the bastard with anything they could get their hands on. They'd ripped a spire or antenna off of a tower and stabbed him in the face and neck, getting some beautiful gushers of blue, but the fucker was still fighting.

Finally, as Jaeger and kaiju staggered back in the general direction of the ocean along the highway, Romeo seized one of the bridges itself, throwing his considerable weight behind it and ripping it free. As Hardship came back in for another shot, they swung, and blue sprayed as they pegged the monster below his axe-shaped head. "Come on, guys, come on!" Tendo yelled, forgetting himself.

"Amazon, where are you?" demanded Pentecost.

"_We're over Penco, ETA twenty minutes! Neural handshake initiated!_"

Maybe, just maybe, Romeo wouldn't need them. He plowed through the buildings and hammered down on the stunned Hardship with his concrete bludgeon. "Oh, yes, yes!" hissed Cady. The kaiju fell, and the Gages pressed their attack. Again and again, under the skull armor, right over the eyes, under the chin at the jaw.

"I think they've got him, I think they've got him..."

"Kaiju's down!"

"Still have signature, Romeo!"

_"We hear you..._" Tendo sucked in his breath and felt Cady's hand tighten on his shoulder. Those guys sounded _exhausted. _Worse, if they were hurt...

He could just make out Isabel Khouri's voice over Amazon Delta's com. _"Hang on, hang on, hang on..._"

It was as if the Shatterdome shook with every blow. Romeo planted a foot on Hardship's arm and pounded the kaiju until their slab of earthquake-reinforced bridge crumbled, then seized its head by the skull fin and _wrenched _it, back and forth. Sound wasn't coming through the spotters' pickups very clearly amid the sizzling and crashing of buildings and explosions and the Jaeger's movements, but Tendo could almost _see _the monster's neck breaking.

_They still breathe in some form or fashion, more like reptiles than humans, _K-Science reported. _Breaking the neck is just as fatal for them as it is for us mammals. _

People were standing up around the LOCCENT stations, chanting, praying, hanging onto each other...

"NO SIGNATURE!" It was Team Romeo's mission controller who made the call, and the Lima Shatterdome erupted into wild cheers.

"QUIET!" Pentecost bellowed, and they all shut up. "Romeo Blue, report!"

For a minute, there was only ragged panting on the speakers. _But if they're breathing, they're alive, they'll be okay... _

"Romeo?"

"_We got it,_" the twins chorused, sounding weaker than Tendo had ever heard. "_'s done_."

_"This is Amazon Delta, touching down eight hundred meters from you, Romeo. Are we late to the party?" _asked Rey Khouri.

Someone was speaking urgently on the line with Pentecost. _" - need to shut down NOW,_" a woman was saying. Dr. Lightcap?

"Romeo Blue, this is Marshall Pentecost. Move away from that carcass. I want you to deactivate handshake and power down immediately."

No answer.

"Romeo, do you copy?"

_Oh, shit. _

_"This is Amazon, we're moving in to assist. Bruce, Trevin, can you hear us?" _

"_C-copy._" The Mark I had taken some nasty blows from the long battle, but Tendo imagined him swaying from sheer exhaustion as he picked his way around the fallen kaiju and climbed back over the bridge towards the beach.

Tendo shamelessly stood up to look over Romeo's mission control crew's shoulders at their readouts. Bruce and Trevin were still at a crazy level of alignment, but their heart rates and breathing were uneven. No joke; no way could they have kept that up much longer. Tendo wasn't sure what exactly happened if a neural handshake destabilized mid-combat… and he was deeply relieved that this hadn't been the moment to find out.

Amazon Delta skirted the wreckage of the city and came to meet them. Tendo mused that this would be another money shot: the Mark-3 glittering green and beautiful in the rising sunlight, supporting the battered, larger Mark-1 as though he were a wounded human. LOCCENT carefully talked them through the power-down, and Amazon's R&R choppers moved in to get Bruce and Trevin out of the pod.

_"__Pilots disengaged. Vitals are good, no major injuries… We need to evac them on a rig. Severe drift shock, Romeo One's unconscious – make that both, both pilots unconscious._"

"Almost sixteen hours," breathed Dr. Faison next to Marshall Pentecost. "They're going to need brain scans as soon as they're back."

"Plan on it. Gipsy Danger, this is Marshall Pentecost. The kaiju is destroyed. Return to base."

"_Copy that, sir." _Yancy paused. "_R&R crews are asking if you need help on-site?_"

"That's a yes," someone called grimly.

"Confirmed, Gipsy, Whiskey Gamma and Delta are cleared to proceed to Concepcion." Pentecost mobilized the rest of Lima's remaining strike troops for good measure. "Amazon Delta, rejoin your drop crew and get out of there; I don't want you damaged."

_"Understood, sir. Lima Lift Four is picking us up from the beach._"

* * *

><p>"So we went halfway down to the coast and had to turn around again," Raleigh grunted, stumbling out of the pod to the cheers of Gipsy's suit crew. "Figures."<p>

"Hey, it could be worse; Amazon got _all _the way there only to find Romeo hogged all the food!" laughed Christian Warner.

"What's the word on Team Diablo?" Yancy asked, his bones making alarming popping noises as he stretched after each armor piece came off. He had a feeling Team Amazon was going to be pretty wiped out too when they got back. He couldn't even imagine how flattened Bruce and Trevin were.

Tendo came in with his tablet, checking the reports from Diablo's crew. "So far, looks like they're going to make it. Not good, but..." He made a face. "Not dead. A lot of broken bones, internal injuries... Ben's got a skull fracture."

Raleigh tripped over his own feet as they got him out of his circuitry suit. "Are the Gages coming back here?"

"Yeah, only Diablo's staying in the hospital down there, and that's for emergency treatment. Bruce and Trev _seem _to be okay. No injuries really severe, but Dr. Faison wants to get them in the brain scanner ASAP. She didn't even think it was possible to drift sixteen hours, and Dr. Lightcap is really worried."

Christian finished wrangling the layers of their suits off and announced, "That's it, Becket boys. We'll finish up in here; go get some sleep."

"Did you guys get any?" Yancy asked wryly, fumbling into his clothes.

"Yeah, we had shifts once you lifted off. One other bit of good news; K-Watch is installing a new batch of monitors down here, so guess who's comin' to town?" Christian grinned.

"Chloe? Hey, that's great, man!" Raleigh exclaimed, high-fiving him. "When's she getting here?"

"Well, they were planning on getting to work as soon as Pain-In-The-Ass-Horny-Toad was taken down, so they're probably already on their way." Christian waved them cheerfully towards the door. "Everyone should be back on-base in a couple days, rested up, and God willing, we'll have some good news on Team Diablo. Class reunion."

"It's a date. Good job, everyone!"

By mutual unspoken decision, they stopped off at Diablo's bay to check in on their crew and wish them well. "Call us or any of our guys if you need anything," Yancy told them seriously.

"Thank you, Rangers." Their support chief looked wan and tired, but she smiled. "We're just thanking God they're alive. The rest will follow. Go and rest. Every one of you earned it."

_I wish we could've done more. _Objectively, he knew it might not have helped, and he knew Diablo's crew knew it too. That had been a fast, powerful, and especially-unpredictable kaiju. Yancy and Raleigh were a little surprised that he'd ended up below Yamarashi on the scale - but smaller definitely didn't mean safer. Yamarashi hadn't been able to jump like that.

The Dome was eerily quiet with so many personnel down in Concepción, but it didn't stop Yancy from collapsing into his bed to plunge gratefully into sleep.

* * *

><p>He woke with a lurch and a strangled yell, shaking the whole bunk. Heart hammering, he looked at the lower bunk: empty. <em>But Raleigh - Raleigh - <em>

Pure instinct drove him, and he stumbled barefoot to the floor and out of their room and started running.

Raleigh must have woken up earlier, maybe restless as usual - he was down in Diablo's bay. Yancy knew that without having to think about it, but something was wrong, terribly wrong...

He vaguely noticed Tendo coming from the opposite direction, probably from LOCCENT, heard him calling, but he burst into the bay to see a crowd of people standing around one of the monitors..

Among them, Raleigh. Slack-jawed, eyes wide and shocked. Wreckage and smoke were on the screen, a familiar image in the aftermath of an attack, but what had happened -

_"Oh my god,_" people were whispering. "Oh dear God."

"What the hell was that?!"

"Dunno, some kind of explosion - _shit, _there was no way they could've dodged it - "

" - What?" Yancy caught his brother's arm. Raleigh blinked at him. "What's happened?"

Raleigh just stared, his eyes darting from Yancy back to the screen. He _couldn't _answer. So Tendo did, his voice strained, jaw clenched.

"Whiskey Gamma's down."

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon: **__Even before Knifehead, before the war's turning point, the Jaeger Program lost some of its heroes in action, and Team Gipsy was no exception. Raleigh and Yancy grieve lost friends, and glimpse the ugly side of PPDC propaganda - and back in the United States, an interview with Kaori Jessop's widower gives student journalist Naomi Sokolov a change in perspective in __**Chapter Thirty-Six: With Their Laughing Comrades**__._

**Original Character Guide**

Reynaldo (Rey) and Isabel Khouri: Rangers of Amazon Delta, a Mark-3 Jaeger jointly funded and built by Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. A married couple from Guayaquil, Ecuador in their early 30s. Reynaldo is of Lebanese descent, and Isabel is mestizo.

Benjamin (Ben) Gonzalez and Felipe Jara: Diablo Intercept's Rangers, mid-30s, Chilean, worked together on a submarine in the Chilean Navy before K-Day.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative, Mexican-American, mid-60s, crew den mother.

Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, late 20s, African-American from Atlanta, GA, attended academy with Beckets and his sister, Chloe, who is now in K-Watch.

Chloe Warner: K-Watch worker in Honolulu, transferred after she and her brother Christian failed to become Rangers at Academy. Age 25.

Cady Spencer: Gipsy Danger LOCCENT Technician (along with Tendo Choi), Filipino-American, age 27 from Portland, Oregon.

Lea Franklin - age 19, lived in San Jose, California. Sole survivor of K-Day out of her family because she was traveling abroad with a school group. Extremely gifted, but has intense social anxiety due to PTSD. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC as an Engineer.

Strike Troop Whiskey Gamma

Brandon Pines: PAVE Hawk pilot, early 30s from Monterey, CA, transferred from the US Air Force, went through Jaeger Academy Class 2016-B with the Beckets and Tendo.

Nicola Harris: Rescue/recovery EMT, age 21 from San Diego, CA, black/Latina. Occasionally has a casual hook-up with Raleigh, graduated Jaeger Academy Class 2017-A as a support officer.

Antwan Ferrier: Gipsy Danger Personnel Coordinator. Age 39, Jamaican national, oldest member of Class 2016-B in the Jaeger Academy with the Beckets and Tendo.


	36. With Their Laughing Comrades

_**Author's Notes:**__ I actually didn't plan the posting of this story to result in this chapter being ready on the eve of Remembrance Day/Veterans Day/Armistice Day, but once I realized it was, it seemed fitting to update tonight with a chapter dealing with the loss of men and women to war. The title of the chapter even comes from the _Ode of Remembrance_, in memory of the World War I dead one hundred years ago_.

**Chapter Thirty-Six: With Their Laughing Comrades**

_January 25, 2019…  
>Lima Shatterdome…<em>

It had been some kind of ruptured fuel line or steam explosion that blasted shrapnel into the air as two of the Jaeger Program Pave Hawks had been helping evacuate survivors from a crushed shelter.

Romeo Blue's Lager Four and Gipsy Danger's Whiskey Gamma were bringing in their EMT crews. Lager Four had been lifting off after dropping the medics off, with Whiskey Gamma nearby. Then the explosion's blast had torn Lager Four apart.

The big chopper's rotor blades and chunks of its hull had flown in every direction. There was nothing the other crew could have done to evade the debris. Shrapnel had torn through Whiskey Gamma's rotors, into her windows, and the Pave Hawk had spun out of control and hit the ground with a fiery explosion.

There had been twelve people on board: Airman pilot Brandon Pines and his crew of three, and seven EMTs, including Nicola Harris, all under the command of Personnel Coordinator Antwan Ferrier.

None of them survived.

Hardship claimed almost a thousand lives. That didn't include the pilots of Diablo Intercept, for what small comfort the Jaeger Program could take from that. Benjamin Gonzalez and Felipe Jara would never pilot again; Felipe's spine was broken in two places, and Ben would end up with a metal plate in his skull. Recovery would be lifelong for both of them, but they would live. Even Diablo Intercept himself might be salvaged in the end.

But the PPDC lost over two hundred personnel. The nuclear emergency response teams managed to prevent a total core meltdown of Diablo's - but many of them gave their own lives to do it. The damage from Romeo's duel through Concepción and the surrounding towns was widespread, and amid aftershocks from the earthquake, multiple buildings came down with people and rescue workers still inside. Every single Jaeger crew at the Lima Shatterdome had lost some of their strike troopers.

A part of Yancy tried to focus on the big picture, to remind himself that he and Raleigh and Team Gipsy weren't the only ones grieving. But it was hard to think beyond the most immediate hurt, the most immediate empty spaces in front of them.

Brandon. Nikki. Antwan. Nine more, guys who'd played poker and sung (or critiqued) karaoke, girls who'd danced at the crew parties and joked along the tables in the mess hall. Some military and some civilian, all joined for different reasons but dragged themselves out of bed for drills in the morning and cheered after successful practice runs. _Gone. _

Yancy and Raleigh spent the days after Hardship on a constant rotation around the Lima Shatterdome, from the infirmary to Diablo's bay to their own, looking in on Bruce and Trevin, then on Diablo's support crew, then their own crew.

Bruce and Trevin were near-enough comatose for forty-eight hours after returning to the Dome, unconscious in the infirmary under Dr. Faison's watchful eyes. And what miserable news they had to wake up to: their own lost R&R crew. Yancy and Raleigh took turns with the Khouris and some of Team Romeo's support staff sitting with them. Carolina and Romeo's own PR liaison/moral support chief, Darrell Sullivan, was there with them when Marshall Pentecost told them some of their strike troopers had been killed.

Already drained to their limits from a sixteen-hour handshake and half-day of brutal fighting, the twins cried. Yancy didn't blame them, and had a feeling no one else did either.

What was starting to worry him was that Raleigh hadn't.

His brother was conscientious about the other crews and their own, spending time sitting with the Gages or giving their fellows a shoulder, but through it all, he was quiet. He hugged Chloe Warner when she came off the plane with the K-Watch crews and started to cry the minute she saw her brother. He and Tendo sat on either side of Cady Spencer when he cracked while helping clean out Antwan's locker and found that fisherman's cap. Putting the cap in a place of honor among several other mementos was Raleigh's idea.

But Yancy could almost feel the strain inside his brother, and knew Raleigh's numbness wasn't good. The first time he really seemed to _react _was when they met with Marshall Pentecost to talk about the return of their crewmates' bodies to the US - and in Antwan's case, Jamaica. "It's only been a week since the last movement in the Breach, sir. We should go with that plane. Antwan Ferrier was the only non-American in... Gipsy's casualties; all the rest were even from the same state."

Pentecost looked uncomfortable for the first time that Yancy could recall. "Coverage isn't the only concern here, Rangers. Especially in the case of Mr. Ferrier, the death of a non-Pacific national against a kaiju will garner some attention."

Raleigh looked from him to Yancy in confusion, but Yancy had no more idea than he did what Pentecost was talking about. "I don't understand."

Pentecost looked a little run down himself these days. "There is some public frustration with us after Concepción. Some of the questions that were raised in Guayaquil are coming up again." Seeing their baffled expressions, he elaborated, "Questions of whether meeting the kaiju with walking nuclear reactors is doing more harm than good."

Heat began to gather in Yancy's chest, and he saw Raleigh bristling too. "Really." _Okay, fine, what exactly did they think would work better than Jaegers? _"So they'd rather go back to just nuclear warheads?" Raleigh kept his voice impressively level.

And there was an edge in Pentecost's tone that made Yancy wonder if he was irritated with someone other than Raleigh this time. "That point has been made, and there haven't been many good replies. However, there are concerns with the PPDC about too much focus on the pilots visibly mourning."

"What?" Yancy stared at him. "Not even our own crew?!"

"_I'm _not saying that, Ranger Becket." _But somebody is. That's what he's trying to tell us. _"The people we've lost deserve the honors we've already given them, and more, and it reflects only good on both of you that you want to escort their plane home." Pentecost looked down. Yancy knew he'd been with the British RAF before K-Day; anybody could tell, the guy might as well have "Career Military" tattooed on his forehead. It went without having to say. But... by that same token, he obviously knew all too well how Team Gipsy felt at this moment. Air force officers worked in crews too. "Understand this: the time may come... the time _will _come when I or your other superiors can't give you leave to mourn those we've lost. There will be other events like Guayaquil, like Concepción, high-fatality engagements, and if the rate of attacks continues to accelerate, the Rangers will not be free to pay all the respects that our comrades deserve."

Yancy felt cold now. Diablo Intercept was down; Felipe and Ben were down, if alive. Tidal Dragon was decommissioned, and rumor had it that Jiro Shindo was terminally ill from radiation exposure. Silver Lion's pilots had died, and nobody knew whether Lion could be salvaged. Attacks were coming two months apart now instead of three or four. _What if we start to run out of Jaegers... or pilots?_

_But Antwan... Nikki... Brandon... all the rest. They've died, they have to be buried. They died in the line of duty. How can we not be the ones to take them home? We were their Rangers._

Because he couldn't argue with the ultimate truth of what Pentecost was warning, he asked instead, "Is _this _that time, sir?"

Pentecost looked from him to Raleigh and back. Then he shook his head. "No. I'll give you and Gipsy's crew leave to join Antwan Ferrier's escort to Jamaica, then you can join the group returning to Los Angeles where the American officers will land."

"Thank you, sir."

* * *

><p><em>January 28, 2019…<br>University of Colorado, Boulder…_

Naomi Sokolov saw no reason to deny being a Jaeger Fly. At twenty-one, a Journalism major with several awards under her belt, she might not brag about the dates she'd gone on with Rangers so much anymore, but she still loved the Jaeger Program, and everyone around her knew it.

She was a little embarrassed by some of the things she'd gotten up to in Anchorage and freshman year, but not much. "I was a dumb teenager. It's not like I did anything terrible." She didn't brag anymore about having gone out with Yancy Becket, but she didn't deny it either. To those who sneered that she'd been a notch in his bedpost, she shrugged. "And he was a notch in mine. We're even."

As a student, she'd gained enough knowledge of the Jaeger Program and enough skill at writing that she started getting assignments on it regularly. It was a resume booster and a bragging point, and when she landed one of the only student interviews with Duc Jessop for his visit to campus, she considered that a crown jewel in her fledgling career.

In thirty minutes, her entire outlook changed.

Duc Jessop was a handsome man, but Naomi knew he'd been recently widowed, and had developed some tact - and some professionalism. She asked about his service before the Jaeger Program and K-Day, and his training for Tacit Ronin, skirting carefully around the subject of his late wife. But when she asked what led him to this university tour, his answer startled her. "Several things. I'm... looking to keep busy. And still under orders."

"Orders to do what?"

"Keep the outlook on the Jaeger Program positive."

Naomi frowned. "Off the record... would your personal outlook be less positive?"

The Ranger eyed her. "You do know what off the record means, love."

She turned off her dictaphone and said firmly, "I won't even write it down if you don't want me to. But the Jaeger Program is a special project, and it's important to know more than the official line."

Now he grinned, more broadly than the polite, neutral smile that he'd been giving the deans and the reporters. "Grown up a bit, then?" She turned bright red, and he laughed. He had a nice laugh. "I recognized your name. You'd a bit of a reputation at Kodiak - not to worry, I don't hold it against you."

Chagrined, she mumbled, "I was a dumb teenager, I admit it."

"And god knows, there's not much entertainment up there. I never did get used to the weather."

"Will you not be going back to teach at the Academy after... the tour?"

"No, I will. They need some experienced pilots to live to speak about it, firsthand." He looked at her phone, still off, and said quietly, "That's a rarity. Off the record, I have a feeling it'll always be."

Naomi ran her mind through the names of every Ranger. Only five had died so far, but out of less than forty? A chill began to grow deep inside her chest. "All I really have access to are the official reports of fatalities. Are there... other complications from piloting?"

"My wife died of cancer after two years of piloting a nuclear powered mech. She wasn't the first of us to be diagnosed, and she won't be the last."

"Tidal Dragon." Her pilots had been retired, and only one of them appeared in public. "Coyote Tango... but she's is still in service." Naomi could only recall having seen one of Coyote's original pilots in the past year either.

"Yes, refitted with more shielding, and stronger protocols for pre-medicating the pilots. In the early days, we were so desperate we didn't care. Hell, I'm not even saying that was wrong. But there was a price, and the higher-ups don't want to acknowledge that when the Jaeger Program is really showing success."

"Did you all know what you were signing up for?"

"An experiment, yes. An act of desperation. After San Francisco, Cabo, and Sydney, how much worse could it get? Now we have to pretend it's under control, and there isn't still a human cost."

"There are protests after Concepción," she murmured. "Questions about the toxic waste from the Jaegers' nuclear power. Isn't it still better than the alternatives?"

"Of course." The great Duc Jessop looked tired and worn, and Naomi recalled images of him with more energy, more life. Laughing, grinning, more like the Tunaris, the Gages, or the Beckets. Granted, he'd had a wife then and still been an active pilot - was grief the only reason? _Why shouldn't it be? _

"Would you like to talk about your wife? On or off the record?" she asked carefully, and prayed she wasn't cruel for asking.

To her intense relief, he didn't seem hurt by her asking. But he told her, "It can only be off the record. Rangers aren't supposed to be seen mourning. It's bad morale."

"What?! But..." _But she was your _wife_! _"Whose policy is that? The Jaeger Program? The commanders, the UN?" Whoever it was, who the hell did they think they were?! Where did they get off putting a restriction like that on this man and the others like him?!

"Some among each, I reckon, people with very particular notions about how Rangers should be seen. Even the memorials of our combat casualties have resistance. It draws attention to death, never mind that we know most of the ones who died in the line of duty."

Naomi was appalled. "But that's sacred," she protested weakly. "In almost every country, we have memorial traditions for our troops. The reports out of Concepción and Guayaquil - you lost hundreds of first responders. How could the Rangers not honor them?"

Just so." She thought _maybe _he was pleased by her outrage. She'd certainly abandoned all notions of jounalistic neutrality. "Not to mention that we don't deploy in a vacuum. Every Jaeger in the Lima Dome lost some of their crews in Concepción, people they trained and drilled and worked with. Kaori and I lost quite a few friends in the early days." The Ranger sighed. "And all that's off the record."

A part of her longed to write a furious, inflamed exposé, to call out anyone who said that heroes shouldn't be seen honoring their own. But what would she bring down on this man who'd already risked - and lost - so much?

"How can I help you, sir? What can I do for all of you?"

His smile was bittersweet, and his answer was truly terrible. "In a year, maybe two, I'll be gone. Maybe by then, the time will be right to start talking whether the brass likes it or not. For now... remember we were mortal. Remind the world if you can."

It was a few minutes before she could ask. "Have you... been diagnosed too?" He just nodded, still smiling. "I'm sorry."

Ranger Jessop shrugged. "I suppose it's too bad I probably won't see the end of this war. On the other hand..." he gave her another, fuller smile. "I'll be back with her soon, if you believe that sort of thing."

She wasn't sure if she did believe that sort of thing. _But if anyone deserves an afterlife, you do. _"Thank you for trusting me."

"Thank you for listening. For _seeing _us."

* * *

><p>Naomi was very distracted for the rest of the day. Her friends and classmates assumed she was starstruck, or just emoting over his tragic loss. Well, in a way, both were true.<p>

The next day, there was a small news story from Jamaica that got briefly picked up by the national outlets. Her roommate called, "Hey, Naomi, it's your boyfriend!"

Only a few local reporters had covered the arrival of a plane bearing the body of a Jamaican national from the PPDC who'd died in Concepción. It was just a "local interest" piece until the few family and community with cameras had set eyes on the pallbearers bringing the flag-draped coffin off the plane onto the airstrip. The uniformed PPDC officers weren't a surprise to see, but then someone exclaimed, "It's the Beckets!"

It was. Gasps and cries of shock rang out; some of the bystanders started to cry. The six people carrying Personnel Coordinator Antwan Ferrier's coffin all wore the insignia of Gipsy Danger, and the two in front were the Rangers themselves. They were pure dignity, the picture of honor. Even the reporters and newscasters relaying the story seemed speechless.

Naomi was not ashamed of having slept with Yancy Becket. But she found herself a little ashamed now, because only now did she feel like she was really _looking _at him and his brother. _"Thank you for seeing us,_" Duc Jessop had said.

_I see you now. You've lost a friend. You'll miss him. They're more than just symbols. So are you. _

She researched the casualties of Hardship. Gipsy Danger had lost an entire strike troop crew, commanded by the Jamaican man whose coffin the Beckets were carrying. Searching out candid pictures of the crews, she saw those people with the Beckets and the other Rangers, often. A big black man in a fisherman's cap, arm-wrestling with someone at a party, cheered on by the Beckets and the Gages. A group of airmen, the command chopper pilots, showing model Pave Hawks to schoolchildren, explaining how they worked. That pretty EMT that Raleigh had dated, freaking out over a snake. A big group of them playing beach volleyball in Lima, wearing T-shirts that said Whiskey Gamma, and the back of each shirt had a different quote from Indiana Jones. A group picture from that same beach party with the Beckets wearing Indiana Jones fedoras.

_They weren't just coworkers or comrades in arms. They were friends. _Now these people, all of them, not just the Rangers, they were grieving. And they were honoring men and women who were no less heroes than the ones inside the Jaeger conn-pods.

That was the angle she took for her story, careful not to drop a hint that Duc Jessop had given anything other than the company line. But there was plenty of precedent for praising soldiers who honored their fallen, and so she could do that without seeming radical. She cited the memorial history of the US, the UK, and every country with moving tributes to its war heroes. She invoked the power and glory of military funerals, and praised the Beckets for their actions in Jamaica and at El Segundo Base in LA where the American casualties were brought home in flag-draped caskets to their parent nation's soil.

"_The Jaeger Program made more heroes than the teams who pilot the machines. Every man and woman who serves on their crews, supports the equipment, pilots their escorts, and works on rescue deserves to be honored for their sacrifice_."

* * *

><p><em>January 30, 2019…<br>Los Angeles Shatterdome…_

The fences of the LA Shatterdome and El Segundo military base were woven with flowers. Yancy's ears rang with gunfire, but not from combat. Twenty-one-gun salutes for twelve of his friends, returned to their home countries for burial, and Yancy and Raleigh had attended the funerals of every one of them. Another seven from Team Romeo's R&R crew, some friends, some just casual acquaintances. All their own people. All mourned, all missed.

"The Gages are still in the hospital, so we're representing the American teams from Lima," he explained to the press.

Team Yankee, Team Matador, and Team Mammoth stuck close to them, marching out in formation with the Los Angeles-based crews for each memorial. That wasn't surprising. Neither was the fact that they helped run interference with the press - and the psychs. Yancy was deeply grateful for that, because even though the Beckets hadn't gotten near Hardship, he was starting to fear they'd end up grounded before long due to the aftermath.

Raleigh wasn't sleeping. In public, he was all decorum, more than Yancy had ever seen. Rals was composed through the memorial service, saluting on cue and dignified when _Taps _played. Carolina had quietly observed to Yancy that the psychs and the brass were taking it as an indication that the younger Becket was finally growing up.

_Fuck them. As if losing so many friends is just a life lesson. _And anyone who knew Raleigh could tell damn well that this was not a good sign.

"I'm fine," Rals kept insisting. He let Yancy hug him before and after memorials, and initiated hugs of his own, but Yancy could sense the difference. So could their other close friends, like Tendo, Christian, and Cady.

To Yancy's intense surprise, Lea came to talk to him. At least, he was surprised until he considered that if anyone was an expert on grief, it was Lea Franklin of San Jose, California. "People handle things differently. It doesn't mean he's doing it wrong."

Yancy sighed. He still felt awkward around her, always wondering if she was still nursing feelings for him, and worrying that anytime he went to her for a favor, it would be patently unfair. But this was for his brother's sake. "I gotta admit, I kind of wanted to ask you."

She lowered her eyes, but smiled. "I know, I noticed. And... you can, it's okay. For a long time, yeah, I couldn't talk about it, but it's better now. And helping people with this kind of thing... that can help me too."

He hadn't thought of that. "You think that's what Rals is doing? Is that good, him helping the others?"

"Doesn't it help you? That's what you've been doing," Lea pointed out.

Now he grimaced. If only he could claim such selfless motives. "I guess, but... it's more like trying to distract myself."

Lea nodded, eyes distant, but she looked more thoughtful than distressed. Even so, he felt guilty for putting this on her, making her talk about it for his sake rather than her own. "You know the stages of grief?"

"I know denial's one. That's what I'm worried about."

"Books and psychs make it sound like a twelve-step program, as if you've got to do it in order or you get it wrong." She met his eyes, and he saw conviction in hers. She was still a small woman, still shy, but she was starting to look and sound older. "They're wrong. It's different for everybody. There were eight of us on that trip to Tokyo, on K-Day, plus two chaperones. All of us lost somebody. Six of us lost everybody."

He swallowed hard and dared to ask: "What happened to the others?"

Her voice was steady as she answered. He couldn't fathom how. "One of the teachers killed herself. So did one of the kids. Some just... disappeared. Two went into social services. They're both grief counselors now, helping people too. Four of us joined up, including me." She smiled wearily. "All of us had setbacks. Episodes. I still do. One day you think you're on top of it, you've got it under control, and the next... you're drowning. Sometimes you're numb. Sometimes you hate everyone."

"Should I do anything? _Can _I do anything?" _Do I even have the right to try? _

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "If you weren't Rangers, I'd say take it day by day. But..." Lea wrinkled her nose.

Yeah, that was a point, a big one. They couldn't handle anger and conflict like normal people. Time and kaiju wouldn't allow it. It followed that they weren't free to grieve normally either.

Yet... he _couldn't _go to the psychs. Not behind Raleigh's back. That would be a betrayal, and he doubted the headshrinkers would do any good either. _They treat us and our emotions like variables in a fucking equation, or robots. Like they're the pilots and we're the Jaegers, and they control us from inside our own heads. _He hated it and knew Raleigh did too.

"I have to do something, though," he murmured. "I can't... we're Rangers, on active duty. We can't be normal. Not even now. And I didn't realize that when I got us into this."

Now Lea frowned at him. "Way to make Raleigh sound like a mindless minion."

"Dammit!" Devi and Susanti would kick his ass for that, with cause. "I didn't mean that."

_"I hope you won't deny Raleigh his share of the credit." _

Who'd said that? He couldn't place it, so it must have been after a drop. Drift shock left his memories foggy.

"I don't know what to do," he confessed quietly. He told himself it wasn't a betrayal to talk about Raleigh to Lea this way. She was nothing if not discreet, and she wasn't a superior or a shrink, just a friend. A friend who'd been there - been there far more than any of them. "I don't think he's okay, and... I'm not okay either. We have to be ready."

But she had no real answer for him. "I don't know what's the right thing to do," she said. "Other than talking to him yourself."

* * *

><p>So he did. He and Rals went running on the edges of the base grounds, to avoid paparazzi <em>and <em>PPDC cameras. For several miles, they both kept their eyes on the bulk of the Dome to avoid seeing the flower-decked fence. Finally, Yancy stopped and made himself look.

Only nine days since so much had changed. Another Jaeger down, pilots clinging to life, probably crippled permanently. Dozens of their friends and colleagues dead, hundreds of civilians too, people they'd tried so hard to protect.

"Yance?"

Unable to look at Raleigh, he plucked a random card from the fence. It was decorated with poppies, addressed with a child's scrawling handwriting.

_Dear Rangers and your crew,_

_Thank you for fighting the kaiju. I am sorry for your loss. My family is praying for you. Get well soon. _

Raleigh's hand was on his shoulder. "Why torture yourself?"

"I'm not okay," he murmured. _And neither are you. _He kept that part back. It wouldn't help to put his brother on the defensive. "I don't know what to do." Raleigh's hand rose to his head, fingers in his sweat damp hair, as he observed bitterly what he and Lea had before. "We can't even mourn like normal people."

"What's normal anyway?" Raleigh shifted into his path to keep him from turning away. This was one of those moments when Yancy was keenly aware that his little brother was taller than he was, and not a kid anymore. "Don't think I haven't noticed you side-eyeing me, Yancy-man."

"Sorry," Yancy muttered sheepishly. Yeah, he hadn't exactly been subtle. "I just... what if it hits all at once?"

Now Raleigh dropped his eyes. "It's not like she was the love of my life," he murmured.

"I know. We all do. But that doesn't mean... and she's not the only one... missing." _Gone. Gone and not coming back, ever. _"It's like we're... stuck."

"I'm not doing it on purpose. Just... sort of numb." Raleigh looked at the fence, but didn't seem to flinch the way Yancy did. "Maybe that's better."

"Do you _like _it?" He didn't mean it to sound so accusing, but his brother stiffened.

"No!" Raleigh protested. "I don't! But what else is there to do, rip it open and lose it?!" He walked away a few paces, looked at the fence, and then at the ground. "There's... it's the psychs too. I get freaking nauseated when I think about that."

Yancy sighed, staring at the card in his hand. He'd have to take it back to the Dome now; it didn't seem right to just leave it or throw it away. "Yeah, I'm not too keen on that either. They'd treat it like just another thing to analyze." He smiled bitterly. "So I'm trying to analyze it myself, get ahead of 'em."

Raleigh made a noise like a half-laugh. "At least you know they were people, not - " his voice broke. It startled him as much as it did Yancy, and he quickly turned away.

"Rals." Yancy caught his arm. Raleigh didn't turn back, but didn't jerk away either. "Maybe just... let it out." His own voice was getting very rough.

"I don't _want _to," Raleigh whispered.

Yancy tugged, and this time Raleigh turned around to embrace him. "That makes two of us," Yancy admitted.

* * *

><p><em>February 11, 2019…<br>Lima Shatterdome…_

It was Carolina who finally yanked them all out of the rut, with Tendo Choi as her unlikely (but not unwilling) ally. Three weeks after Romeo Blue defeated Hardship, the teams got their new assignments for the post-engagement shuffle. Matador Fury was reassigned to Lima while Romeo was in repair, along with Solar Prophet and Gipsy Danger. Amazon Delta went back to Panama with Hydra Corinthian, Rio Sentry, and Puma Real.

In Lima, the crew of Gipsy Danger was met by their newly-appointed replacement crew for Whiskey Gamma. It was awkward, to say the least. To Raleigh's relief, the new strike troopers were professional. Most came from the same military stock as Brandon Pines and Yankee Star's crew. They didn't take Team Gipsy's standoffishness personally, though Raleigh felt bad for not being more welcoming of them at first. He just... wasn't quite ready. He knew Yancy and the others felt the same.

Three days in, they were all at breakfast when the base drill alarm sounded: **_"Gipsy Danger, report to Bay 01 for full deployment test. All hands on deck."_**

For a moment, everyone just sat there. Then Tendo's voice came over the com from LOCCENT. "_That's a muster drill, Team Gipsy. Previous time, forty-nine minutes. Let's break the record for absent friends, guys._"

Raleigh's throat closed, and he heard it so clearly in his mind that surely the others did too. A Caribbean accent, singing out: _Muster drill, muster drill!_

And Yancy stood up, banging the table. "You heard him, Gipsy crew, on deck. Let's go."

They abandoned breakfast and started running. Even though they hadn't drifted since Hardship, Raleigh caught Yancy's elbow to keep him from getting too far ahead on the way to the bay. When they passed the main door and saw the fisherman's cap above Gipsy's status screen... Raleigh knew he was going to break. But Yancy looked at him and stopped him in the empty hall outside the drive suit room. He pulled Raleigh to him, pressing their foreheads together.

"We'll make it," he hissed through clenched teeth. "For them. We won't let 'em down."

Raleigh could only nod, but squeezed Yancy's arm, feeling him trembling.

It was hard to look anyone in the eye as they suited up, and instead of the usual banter and chatter, lots of breaths were hitching. So Raleigh could draw some consolation that he wasn't the only one feeling close to the edge. Nobody commented on the state of the pilots, and to his genuine surprise, the psychs didn't come swooping down to haul them all in for counseling. Once he was gloved and armored and getting ready to pull on his helmet, wiping his face was getting difficult. Christian grabbed some tissues and did it for him, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Yancy's techs doing the same.

"Least I'm not the only one," Raleigh muttered wryly.

Christian made a noise like a snort - or something else - and Raleigh looked up and saw how wet the crew's faces were. That did it; he was sobbing, but laughing too. So was Yancy. So was their team. It was mortifying... but comforting at the same time. It didn't make sense, and it didn't really have to.

"You guys okay?" asked someone from the doorway.

Yancy drew a shaky breath and reached for his helmet. "Yeah, yeah. We've got it. We're okay."

"We're okay," Raleigh agreed, pulling himself together. Their crews dried their tears once more, and they put their helmets on.

* * *

><p>Stacker had his doubts when Carolina Olivares proposed an unscheduled full drill only days after Whiskey Gamma was reassigned. Her additional insistence that the Psych Analysts not interfere was unorthodox, and many of the Dome staff were expecting a full-scale meltdown.<p>

But Dr. Faison backed the plan, and aided Olivares in enlisting Tendo Choi. "This is a hurdle they need to get over early while we're safest. Going through the deployment without their friends. Let them have their moment to mourn if they need it, and don't punish them for it."

"They'll all lose it," one of the psychs predicted. "The Rangers will be out of alignment from start to finish, assuming the crew can even get them into the conn-pod on time."

There were days where Stacker wondered just who hired the Psych Analysts and what their qualifications were. There were a lot of those days. This was one of them. The prediction was, he supposed he had to admit, partially right. As the drive suit techs finished prepping the Rangers before drop, Team Gipsy was still well within the time requirements, but one of the doctors (sour at not being allowed to observe) asked, "So, who's crying in there?"

Faison shrugged, physically keeping herself between the security feed and unsympathetic eyes. "It'd be easier to tell you who's not."

"But they're on schedule," Olivares pointed out.

Choi and Spencer had their backs to Stacker and the other staff, but he could see their faces in the reflection of the LOCCENT screens - and the wet trails visible there. Olivares was wiping her eyes, untroubled by what anyone thought. "They needed this. They're meeting all the times, and they'll get it done."

She was right. They did.

* * *

><p>Raleigh and Yancy braced themselves hard for the handshake, knowing the rabbits that would be waiting for them in the drift. And they both knew that just shouting something stupid about comics or pink elephants probably wouldn't be enough if they went out of alignment.<p>

"_Prepare for neural handshake, Rangers_." Jesus, even Pentecost sounded like he was trying to be nice to them. Was that a good sign, or just an indication that they were completely screwed?

"_You guys ready?_" Tendo asked.

"Yeah," said Yancy, looking sideways at Raleigh. Raleigh nodded. "Yeah, we're ready. Let's do it."

Tendo counted down, and Raleigh fought to keep breathing. He hadn't been so nervous about a handshake in years. _Focus, focus, focus... _

They plunged into the drift space.

_"Let's break the record for absent friends."_

_"Muster drill, muster drill!"_

"_Whiskey Gamma's down._"

"_It's not like she was the love of my life." But after Nicola Harris's memorial, Raleigh made himself find Brady Harris. Nikki's cousin wasn't surprised to see him coming, nor was the man with him. Raleigh managed not to cringe; it had to be her dad. _

_No blame, though... Raleigh made himself look the man in the eye, shake his hand. After all, Nikki had been his friend..._

"Rals?" Yancy's voice, in his mind and in his ears, brought him back to the present.

He cleared his throat and muttered, "Yeah, I'm good. Left hemisphere, calibrating."

Not exactly good, but he was aligned. "_Good job, Gipsy_." They heard applause over the speakers as they brought their hands together and finished calibrating. There would be four chopper crews out on the pad as they rolled out, waiting to launch in formation around them.

_I thought Brandon Pines was full of it at the Academy. He just wanted to pilot a Jaeger so much. He'd lost so many people on K-Day..._

He got the mental equivalent of an embrace from Yancy. Not as good as the real thing after a rough drift, but it was still comforting. _It's okay, Rals. We all learned better. _

Brandon had been the one to warn them, when he'd come back to be their support pilot after Guayaquil. You lost people in combat. You had to keep moving. That was what they were doing. _"It's a way of honoring them._"

_We'll try, buddy. _

But that meant turning their mental eyes away from images of a girl in a red dress, dancing and laughing, never realizing how soon she was going to die. A big man in a fisherman's cap, dancing, joking, looking out for everybody. Team Dad by popular appointment, the oldest of the crew after Carolina.

"_Well, I'm old enough to be both of your dads!"_

_I wish you had been - _

The handshake was wavering, sliding off-course and out of the present. "_Gipsy One, you're starting to drift off. Yancy? You're going out of alignment!_" Cady warned.

Yancy grunted and shook his head. "Sorry... I got it."

_Why are they gone? Why do they have to be gone? _Was that Raleigh's thought or Yancy's? Or both? Did it matter?

They held onto the handshake and reality as the crawler rolled them towards the bay doors. _I don't know why they're gone. Just that we're still here, so we have to keep going. _

If they looked, they could see each other in the drift space, like an after-image from bright light. It could trigger rabbits to focus on their mental selves, but there were so many floating around today that it didn't really matter. And in the drift space, Raleigh could cry and nobody but Yancy would know. And Yancy wouldn't tell.

_Just keep moving. _They leaned on each other in the drift space, and in the real world, the bay doors opened, and Gipsy Danger stepped back out into the sunlight.

**_To be continued..._**

_**Coming Soon:**__ The Jaeger Program and our heroes move on from the losses to Hardship in a world of where propaganda and politics can have as much power as any kaiju attack. And with summer 2019 comes a new attacker, Clawhook, and a battle that pushes Raleigh and Yancy's bond past the limit in __**Chapter Thirty-Seven: Endurance.**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Benjamin (Ben) Gonzalez and Felipe Jara: Diablo Intercept's Rangers, mid-30s, Chilean, worked together on a submarine in the Chilean Navy before K-Day. They suffered severe and probably permanent injuries in the fight with Hardship.

Jiro and Hayase Shindo: the pilots of Tidal Dragon, Japan's Mark-2 Jaeger, late 20s, foster siblings. Tragically, they only fought one battle before Tidal Dragon was discovered to have a severe design flaw resulting in massive radiation exposure to her crew, forcing them to retire and the Jaeger to be decommissioned.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative, Mexican-American, mid-60s, crew den mother.

Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, age 28, African-American from Atlanta, GA, attended academy with Beckets and his sister, Chloe, who is now in K-Watch.

Chloe Warner: K-Watch worker in Honolulu, transferred after she and her brother Christian failed to become Rangers at Academy. Age 26.

Cady Spencer: Gipsy Danger LOCCENT Technician (along with Tendo Choi), Filipino-American, age 28 from Portland, Oregon.

Lea Franklin: J-Tech Engineer, age 19, lived in San Jose, California. Sole survivor of K-Day out of her family because she was traveling abroad with a school group. Extremely gifted, but has intense social anxiety due to PTSD. Failed the second cut, but stayed with PPDC and joined J-Tech.

Brady Harris: Public Relations Representative for Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. African-American, late 30s, he lost his cousin's daughter, Nicola Harris, when Gipsy Danger's chopper Whiskey Gamma was destroyed.

Strike Troop Whiskey Gamma - destroyed in the aftermath of Hardship with all hands, claiming 12 lives

Brandon Pines: PAVE Hawk pilot, early 30s from Monterey, CA, transferred from the US Air Force, went through Jaeger Academy Class 2016-B with the Beckets and Tendo. One of a minority of pilots from California to survive direct combat with Trespasser.

Nicola (Nikki) Harris: Rescue/recovery EMT, age 21 from San Diego, CA, black/Latina. Occasionally had a casual hook-up with Raleigh, graduated Jaeger Academy Class 2017-A on her second try as a support officer.

Antwan Ferrier: Gipsy Danger Personnel Coordinator. Age 39, Jamaican national, oldest member of Class 2016-B in the Jaeger Academy with the Beckets and Tendo. Took part in the rescue effort when Kaiceph attacked Cabo San Lucas in 2014, where he was working as a civilian cruise ship steward.


	37. Endurance

_**Author's Notes:** Many thanks to everyone for the great feedback! Please keep it coming! Tonight is a double-update of both this fic and _Tales From The Front Lines_ - check out Chapter Five to see how the Gage twins, the Becket boys, and three other Jaeger crews handle a Polar Bear Plunge! As for this fic, there are only a few chapters left! Enjoy!_

_**Canon Note:** Cascade Victor, Butterfly Sword, and Katana Eagle are original Jaeger characters, Mark-4's launched in 2019 from the US, China, and Japan._

**Chapter Thirty-Seven: Endurance**

_March 11, 2019…  
>Lima Shatterdome…<em>

Three more Mark-4's were slated to be launched in 2019, and the official word finally got out that there was a Mark-5 in the works in Brisbane. "So that's why none of the Mark-4's went to Australia," Yancy observed.

Once they were all confined to base by the orange alert, they spent a lot of their down time playing remote chess, and online games with the Hassans, Steffie and Kennedy, and their other fellow Rangers. And, of course, swapping Shatterdome gossip.

"There's a big dispute over who's going to get her," Devi told him. "We have some good candidates coming out of the Academy, but there's brass support for assigning the Hansens as the most experienced team and giving Lucky Seven to the newbies."

"That's interesting. What do the Hansens think? I dunno if I'd want to give up Gipsy even for a flashier model," said Raleigh.

"Scott's all for it. He'll take the new toy every time. Herc's more along Raleigh's line of thinking," said Devi. "Lucky Seven does have a few kinks in her old system. Caitlin thinks they should be able to get smoother response out of the pons than they do, and she's not as fast as the newer models."

"The Mark-5 had better be bloody magnificent," Suze chimed in. "They're already way over budget."

"Who's getting the last of the Mark-4's?" Kennedy asked. "Isn't one of 'em being built in Kodiak?"

"Cascade Victor," Yancy confirmed. "He'll be jointly owned by the US and Canada. He's launching this summer."

"So that's one and a half for Canada," Devi mused. "We're getting a lot more of the joint ownership for the newer models; they cost so bloody much. Japan and Korea went in on Katana Eagle, and China will have Butterfly Sword. They're going to replace Silver Lion and Tidal Dragon."

"Is Tacit Ronin not getting refurbed after all?" Yancy mused in surprise. "Or are they phasing out all the Mark-1's?"

"Dunno. You'd have to ask the engineers. Maybe Lea Franklin will have some dirt on it. Word on the street here is that they're going to lend us to Japan until they've worked out the coverage problems and have Katana Eagle launched. With Ronin still in limbo and Tidal Dragon pretty well scrapped, we're dangerously short up there."

Raleigh made a face over the top of his tablet at Yancy. "Really? What happened to that free-Jaeger-trade thing they had with China and Russia?"

"That's still in force, but neither of them will assign their Jaegers long-term to another country. That's what's got Admiral Yamamoto so nervous. They're just too damn close to the Breach to wait for special delivery. China might give Shaolin Rogue to them for an extended stay, but not until Butterfly Sword is launched, and that'll be this autumn at the earliest."

"We're not too bad on coverage on this side of the lake," Yancy told them. "After the next engagement, they're bumping us up to LA, and Amazon Delta's coming here from Panama."

Suze huffed loudly. "We told the CO's that they should borrow _you. _Hydra already had the chance to ride with you. We want a shot. See how Gipsy measures up here in the East."

Yancy grinned at his brother. "We're on board with that."

* * *

><p><em>April 12, 2019…<em>

The next attack did hit Japan, straining the beleaguered country's Jaeger resources still further. Still, it ended well.

Coyote Tango and Shaolin Rogue repelled the bogey from Kobe, and which bought Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha time to get in front of it in Osaka Bay. Everyone was crowded around the monitors to watch the three-man Jaeger in action; Typhoon did indeed move on three axes. The kaiju was caught between a Chinese hammer and a Russian anvil, and dismembered and pulverized in broad daylight, to the glee of the whole world.

On the other side of the Pacific, the Ranger crews were sharing bowls of popcorn and even caught some of their superior officers smirking. A mad scramble of Musical Shatterdomes followed, as Gipsy Danger was reassigned to Los Angeles and Amazon Delta moved back down to Lima to even out the coverage.

"Romeo's still out of action," sighed Bruce Gage as they prepared to be shipped back to Anchorage. "Dunno how damn long it's going to take to finish those repairs."

The twins were down, not just from that and the deaths of their own strike troopers, but in sheer disgust over another way the PPDC had come up with to promote the Jaeger Program: _Romeo Blue versus Hardship_ was to be the inaugural licensed video game.

"Out of all the engagements they could've picked, _fuck!_" Trevin spat, as the crews from Lima commiserated. "The only one worse would've been Guayaquil!"

"Ben and Felipe and Team Diablo know you weren't okay with this, right? They must know that," said Raleigh, no less appalled by the insensitivity. The idea of being the subject of a video game was pretty cool, but he was on board with the general sentiment - why did it have to be Hardship, the bastard who'd crippled two Rangers and killed hundreds?

Darrell Sullivan, Team Romeo's PR liaison, reassured them all. "Don't worry, Team Diablo is well aware that this wasn't our decision and that Bruce and Trev didn't endorse it. They're military too; they understand that orders come behind a lot of propaganda."

Yancy was scowling, standing close to the twins. "Are you under orders? Are they really going to make you trot out and smile and wave like you're happy about it?" He and Raleigh had been awestruck and envious during the early days when Romeo had been paraded around the world, but now? Raleigh wasn't sure how the twins would be able to stomach it.

Bruce shrugged and shook his head. "They haven't said. Probably. They have a lot of publicity stills and clips of us already; we've _asked _them to just use those if they have to. The second one's going to be the Kobe-Osaka engagement, and China and Japan and Russia are all over it."

"Well, that one makes a shred of sense, at least on the humanitarian side," Tendo pointed out bitterly. "All the Jaegers came through with minor damage and the death toll was one of the lowest - and, come on, that was a great, dramatic fight! Why couldn't they start with it?"

"Complete lack of scruples, I think," said Carolina. "At least they've shelved the Tacit Ronin and Silver Lion fights for now. The last Osaka engagement was a prime candidate for being turned into a video game."

The twins sighed in unison. "Yeah. Better us then them, I guess, small consolation to Duc Jessop. It'd probably hurt sales for people to remember that three of the four pilots from those mechs are dead."

The twins were visible with matching, fixed smiles at the launch of Cascade Victor from Kodiak in June 2019. The first line of official Jaeger Program video games was released as part of the promotions. Anyone who had actually had a few conversations with the Gages could tell just how forced their demeanor was, and they turned the subject anywhere they could when the press asked about it. Even so, the games sold like crazy, and everyone was relieved when some less painful engagements overtook _Romeo Blue versus Hardship_ in popularity.

It never reached the media radar that even the gamer enthusiasts in the Jaeger Program - and there were a lot of them - didn't play the games on principle. It struck just a little too close to home.

* * *

><p><em>PPDC Internal Network<em>

_SHassan: Online  
>RBecket: Online<em>

_SHassan: Hey, Rals! Did you know Russia actually is building an anti-kaiju wall?_

_RBecket: Seriously?! They really think that'll work better than Cherno Alpha?_

_SHassan: I think the idea's collaboration, or taking the stress off the Jaegers. The wall actually is cheaper than more mechs - they're going to string it in between the Kuril Islands to bar the Okhostk Sea and, they're in talks with Alaska to wall off the northern Bering Sea too. So that way Cherno, Eden, and Tigress can patrol that territory without the bogeys getting away from them, since it's so hard to keep the detectors in place in those seas._

_RBecket: How come you always get this stuff before we do?_

_SHassan: Same side of the lake as them, love. And Ketteridge talks to Herc, and Herc talks to us. Are you settled back into LA?_

_RBecket: Mostly. We've got a full dep drill tomorrow afternoon, then in-person combat drills with Mammoth Apostle._

_SHassan: How do you like Mammoth's Rangers? They're military too, aren't they?_

_RBecket: National Guard. They're cool, not as uptight as Caleb and Tanisha can be. Good poker players. Bobby Kanda's the best basketball player I've ever seen outside the NBA, and Ken Gould kicked Yancy's ass in the Kwoon._

_SHassan: LOL! And Baby Becket cheered him on, didn't he?_

_RBecket: No, I was totally cheering for Yancy. Totally._

_SHassan: Devi says you're a brat._

* * *

><p><em>June 9, 2019…<br>Jaeger Academy, Anchorage, Alaska…_

Vincent Gagnon had a heart attack shortly after Cascade Victor was launched. Stacker Pentecost turned over the command of Lima Shatterdome to Gabe Morais in favor of returning to Anchorage to take the pressure off Gagnon - and to try to drum up more than just popular support for the Jaeger Program.

"Coverage is still an issue," he told the UN and Secretary General Krieger. "We have three Jaegers per Shatterdome in the West, still fewer in the East. If the kaiju continue to appear larger and faster, we're going to need bigger, more rapid response."

One of the Homeland Security representatives (from the _East _Coast of the United States, Stacker observed sourly) insisted, "I think our funding would be better served adding to the walls that Russia and Japan have begun rather than building more robots for these monsters to smash."

Dr. Schoenfeld barely contained his disgust. "So you think funding would be better used building a wall for the kaiju to smash?"

"We can make it kaiju-proof."

"The Guam monitoring station was reinforced titanium, and the last kaiju twisted it like a tin can without even slowing down," one of the American generals snorted. "I get Russia's reasoning with the length of frozen ocean and severe weather territory they have to cover, but on our side of the lake, it's a waste of time and resources."

Secretary Krieger was hedging his bets, as usual. "I think further exploration of the topic - a wall as support and perimeter enforcement - is merited, so let's continue that. However, Marshalls, I've reviewed your request for funding, and I don't know that the entire UN has the financial resources you're proposing to add that many mechs to the fleet."

"It's four more Mark-5's," Stacker pointed out. "And refurbishing the ones previously damaged. Tacit Ronin and Diablo Intercept can be restored and re-piloted for a fraction of the budget of one new Jaeger, and even if the reactor and electrical system for Silver Lion have to be completely rebuilt, that will still be far below previous costs. With Katana Eagle and Butterfly Sword this year, that's ten more Jaegers - it could make a tremendous difference for every coastal population."

"The Australian Mark-5 is already severely over budget," said the British commander. "As are both of the remaining Mark-4's. Several of the Jaegers already in service have yet to see action."

"If the pattern of attacks continues to accelerate, they will. The scales will tip, and we need to stay ahead of this," Marshall Ramirez insisted. "That is the only way this program will succeed."

"Why not concentrate resources on more rapid deployment, even across the Pacific if necessary? We have faster choppers with greater lift capacity being built for a fraction of the cost of a Jaeger," suggested another of the Americans.

"Russia's trio now have Super Sikorskys; six of those things can move Cherno Alpha over five hundred miles at a time. China and Japan have already bought a fleet," said Marshall Ketteridge, sounding cross. "For the amount of territory we have to cover in the Southern Hemisphere, for our teams alone, we need them."

"The public wants to see the more popular Jaegers ready for deployment on a faster timetable," Krieger said. "We can certainly purchase state-of-the-art lift crews for them."

"Are we truly thinking of basing deployment on popularity?" muttered Admiral Yamamoto.

Stacker gauged the expressions on the UN representatives' faces, and resisted the urge to remark that that was exactly what they were thinking.

* * *

><p><em>July 22, 2019…<br>Los Angeles Shatterdome…_

The modified, heavier-lift Sikorskys were greenlit and the first batches had the Eastern Hemisphere Jaegers fairly well-covered by mid-July 2019. So as luck would have it, the next kaiju went in the opposite direction.

"_K-Watch is predicting Mexico, maybe Baja_," Tamsin tipped Stacker off.

Stacker flew to Los Angeles with the pre-deployment support teams, trying to provide still more backup to the Jaeger strike troops and bring down the PPDC's internal death toll. He was glad to observe that however immature he sometimes seemed, with the LA and Panama Domes on high alert, even Raleigh Becket was paying attention. The younger Rangers were eager, as always, but responded promptly to orders, and their crews were on task.

"We've got a Category III, codenamed Clawhook - about the size of Grindylow, quadruped, but extremely fast," came the official reports.

"We may have a problem with coverage from the south," Marshall Ramirez observed, studying the placement maps. "Panama is getting hit with severe storms."

Stacker frowned. It often rained there in the summer, but the images of the camera feeds at the Panama Shatterdome looked more like a hurricane. "Can they launch?"

"Jaegers, yes. Support choppers, no. Even the lift choppers are going to have trouble in those conditions."

"_The Mark-4's can spread out on their own power, but that's a long handshake to even get them into position,_" said Marshall Quijano from Panama. "_We're going to need back-up from the other Domes_."

The COs on the opposite side of the Pacific exchanged glances. "_Are you thinking this is the time to try crossover support?_" Marshall Ketteridge glanced at something off his screen and smirked. "_I happen to know Vulcan Specter's crew are all for it. They want to run with their American friends_."

China's General Liang looked reluctant. "_We would offer you one of ours, but we currently have a Category IV yyphoon between us and you. Bypassing it safely will add at least a day for that lift_."

"_You mean Crimson Typhoon can't handle a real typhoon?_" Marshall Gagnon demanded, getting chuckles from the others.

"What's the bogey's ETA on the nearest land?" asked Pentecost.

"He's still circling between the Breach and Hawaii. Typhoon Hako is probably going to disrupt the currents and drive him away from the Eastern Hemisphere targets, as K-Watch is predicting, but it may be awhile before he picks up a scent," K-Watch reported. "If he heads straight for them now, he'd make landfall in approximately eight hours."

"We need someone waiting in Hawaii," said Marshall Ramirez.

"Agreed," said Stacker. He drew lines across the deployment map, deftly calculating the shortest distances and most efficient coverage. "What about Mammoth Apostle? Run Chrome Brutus down to Los Angeles to back up Yankee Star and Gipsy Danger, leave Cascade Victor in Anchorage on reserve. And Lima, run Matador Fury to Southern Mexico - you should have room to bypass the central American weather."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Raleigh Becket bouncing on the balls of his feet as Team Mammoth made ready to take off for their drive suit room. From the way Ketteridge was looking off-screen, he suspected the Hassans were no less eager.

And Ketteridge wasn't immune to the prestige that a successful run - particularly one that broke new strategic ground - would bring to his Shatterdome. "_I'll give you Vulcan Specter. Getting them across is going to be at least twenty-four hours, but we'll start the run now and see if we can't beat the bogey to your door_."

"That's a go. Bring him to LA. We'll deploy him from here," said Ramirez.

* * *

><p>"We're gonna ride with Vulcan!" Raleigh was bellowing as Team Gipsy assembled for deployment prep and watched Mammoth lifting off for Hawaii.<p>

Cady Spencer looked at the bogey blip on the map east of Hawaii with a sadistic grin. "Motherfucker won't know what hit him."

As predicted, it was nearly a day before Clawhook even started moving in a definite direction, but to Team Gipsy's disappointment, Vulcan Specter was diverted to Hawaii to back up Mammoth Apostle first. Still, it did come in handy. The kaiju skirted the western islands before aiming at the north coast of Oahu. "Appropriate, though, our volcanic Jaeger defending the Hawaiian islands," Christian Warner decided.

"_Look at that guy!_" said Steffie Lanphier over the vidcomm as the crews sat watching the action in their prep rooms. Clawhook was zipping through the shallow reefs trying to dodge Vulcan's lava throwers and Mammoth's shells. "_Most of them look like dinosaurs, he's more like... some kind of sloth_."

"_Well, he's a lazy-ass, that's for sure. He's not as aggressive as the last few_," Chloe Warner reported from her station on the Big Island. Christian was anxious for his sister, but she assured them all, "_Even if he hits the Big Island, he'll go for Hilo, not try to climb an old volcano. Our base has less than a thousand people_." K-Watch Headquarters was up on the slopes of Mauna Kea with the astronomical observatories and weather stations.

To everyone's disappointment, Mammoth and Vulcan didn't manage to take Clawhook down, but they repelled him first from Oahu, then from Maui, then from Hilo without him ever coming close to making landfall. "_This bogey has serious evasion skills,_" Team Mammoth warned. "_We're almost out of ammo, and I think we only scored a couple of hits._"

"Even so, good work, Mammoth. You protected a very vulnerable population," Marshall Ramirez told them. "Vulcan, what's your readiness for re-deployment?"

"_We have no damage, drop gear fully operational, all weapons available, Marshall_."

"_Sub-surface stations showing the bogey moving deep and fast, east-northeast_," K-Watch reported. "_We've got a strong runoff current out of Tijuana, and Cabo San Lucas._"

"All right. Vulcan Specter lift crew, bring him into Los Angeles. Yankee Star and Gipsy Danger, on deck."

In the six months since Hardship, Team Gipsy had gotten into the habit of saluting the fisherman's cap as they headed into the bay for deployment. Raleigh was almost at the point where he didn't feel a pang doing it anymore. But he shared a quick smile with Yancy as they headed into the drivesuit room and saluted in unison. _Keep an eye on us all, _mon capitaine_. This one's for you guys. _

Even Whiskey Gamma's new crew, led by Valentina Medina, a Marine Blackhawk pilot from Corpus Christi, Texas, took part in that little ritual. On the coms as they suited up, Raleigh heard her say to the other strike troop crews, "_This one's for our predecessors_."

"_Got that right, Tina. Let's kick ass for the Gamma Twelve_."

"_Okay, Gipsy, we're lifting you to Tijuana_," reported the Jump Hawk crews. "_Yankee Star's being stationed at Cabo, and Chrome Brutus's staying in LA with Vulcan once they arrive._"

"Is Panama completely out of action?" Yancy asked as they were running the pre-dep checks in the pod.

"_The Jaegers aren't, but everything that flies is_," Tendo told them. "_Hurricane-force gusts, cloud to ground lightning, large hail. Hydra Corinthian's being deployed. She's running north to meet up with Matador Fury, but she's having to do it on her own power, no lift for at least a hundred miles_."

Once they were airborne and moving south over the coast, they observed the heavy traffic below. "Where's our bogey?"

"_One hundred eleven miles west-southwest of Tijuana, moving east-northeast at sixty-eight miles per hour. This bastard's one of the fastest we've ever had. Island evacuation is complete_."

Yancy considered the mostly-barren islands near Tijuana's miracle mile. "That'd be a good spot to try and engage this guy. Just inside the ten-mile mark."

"_That works for us if you can catch him, Gipsy_," said Marshall Ramirez. "_Be aware this kaiju seems to be very evasive. Do not expose the coastline._"

"Copy that, ma'am. Permission to hail shipping traffic outside the miracle mile?"

"_Granted_."

They spent the ride passing along warnings to every vessel they spotted and dodging Coast Guard choppers running to rescue the ones that couldn't go ashore fast enough. "_How close is that cabrón?" _a frantic cargo ship captain asked them, trying to decide whether to abandon his load in favor of saving his crew.

"_Less than an hour from your position, Captain,_" Yancy warned him in Spanish. "_Your cargo isn't worth your lives. Abandon your ship and get out of here! We're deploying in ten minutes, and there will be waves if we fight him."_

"_Mierda. Okay, abandoning ship._" Raleigh and Yancy watched faster Coast Guard cutters and rescue choppers picking up the crew as they prepared for neural handshake.

* * *

><p>"<em>I can see the kaiju!" <em>a Mexican news broadcaster was yelling as they came out of driftspace into reality again. "_He's on the surface, heading straight for the islands!_"

"The big question is what's he gonna do when he sees us waiting for him," Raleigh said with a grin. Once he and Yancy too could see the churning water streaming towards them and the kaiju's spectral signature within a mile, he blasted the rescue horns.

The fucker actually stopped. Someone in LOCCENT let out a bark of laughter; it sounded like Tendo. "_Aww, Gipsy, you scared the poor beh-beh_!" cooed one of their spotters.

Even Yancy was grinning, but he turned the horns off. "Too bad we haven't got a fishhook to throw out for him. Spotters, ascend a few hundred for us, just to be on the safe side." _Heeere asshole! _

_Kaiju wanna cracker? _Raleigh added, and now Yance was barely managing not to crack up.

Clawhook was drifting back and forth right outside the miracle mile, as if having trouble making up his mind. It was funny at first, but after ninety minutes, it was getting really irritating. "Goddamn, this guy's skittish."

"_He ran from Mammoth and Vulcan even before they engaged,_" Tendo pointed out. "_Either he's skittish or he's smart; he knows the Jaegers are a threat._"

They tried to keep their own movements subtle, not churning up the water or shaking the sea floor as they moved parallel to the indecisive kaiju. "He's not going to run at us inshore," Raleigh mused. "Not this asshole. Look at him; he's not as armored as the last few guys. If we can snag him, I bet we can get him good with the plasma."

"It still took a few tries to get a solid hit on Grindylow, and he wasn't armored either," Yancy said. "The swimmers have thick skin. LOCCENT, Tendo, did Vulcan actually hit him with the lava throwers?"

_"Hang on... I'm pretty sure those shots missed... they only had him in range three times... that's a negative, Gipsy, no impacts for Vulcan. This bastard's got some flexibility too."_

_He's gonna run... _"Charging rear jets. He's gonna run," Raleigh murmured.

"_Gipsy, do NOT give him the chance to get around you!_" Ramirez admonished.

"We won't, Marshall. We'll stay parallel to him," said Yancy, gearing up his jet controls. "We need deployments to the north and south to meet him whichever way he goes. We'll try and send him in to them, cut him off."

_"Vulcan just landed in LA. He should be ready to re-deploy within two hours... we'll run him out to the west, in case the bogey tries to go deep again. Vulcan's built for deep water operations."_

_"Gipsy, this is Yankee Star, we're on the miracle mile off Cabo. We have Matador Fury and Hydra Corinthian coming up from the south, ETA three hours."_

"Good deal, Yankee... wait..." Raleigh narrowed his eyes at the kaiju's outline, and Yancy saw it too.

"He's going north! He's gonna run northeast! Charging jets! LOCCENT, we need a perimeter on southern California!" Even as Yancy spoke, Clawhook flipped over and went streaking through the water like a shark, aiming mostly parallel to the shore, but coming ever so slightly closer.

Raleigh and Yancy fired the jets and aimed themselves forward, cutting a path through the ocean with their arms out like Superman again to keep themselves between the kaiju and the shoreline.

Off Tijuana's famous beaches, the kaiju veered east, getting an explosion of Spanish curses on the radio channels from the watching locals, and they had to push Gipsy's jets hard to intercept. But then Clawhook, now nicknamed Cabrón (Asshole) by the anxious populous, thought better of it and ran back out again.

"Ahh, fucker!" Raleigh fumed as they stood up on a sand bar three hours later and glared at the retreating trail in the water. _Five hours of deployment and we haven't even had a shot yet!_

Yancy got annoyed at the size of the crowds still in the vicinity of the beach, and called their R&R crews. "Tell those idiots they're not in any way out of the woods yet; they should be evacuating or in a shelter until this thing's dead!"

"_Copy that, Gipsy One, we'll handle it,_" said Tina, the new pilot of Whiskey Gamma. In irate Spanish, she hailed the Mexican Coast Guard. "_Hey, morons, this is not a spectator event! Get your civilians off the beach and into shelter!_"

What the Coast Guard said in response, Raleigh didn't catch, because Cabrón ran for it again. "LOCCENT, we're pursuing. Crossing the border in three minutes!"

"_You got jurisdiction," _Tendo told them dryly. _"Watch it, he's picking up speed!"_

Inshore and out again, due north, then northeast, then northwest... they either looked ridiculous or awesome slicing through the water powered by their jets trying to stay between the shore and the kaiju. Vulcan re-deployed for the umpteenth time to San Clemente island while Chrome Brutus waited off Long Beach.

_If he decides to run due west now, I'm going to scream my fucking head off, _Raleigh fumed.

_Right, we can't catch this piece of shit in the water... _"LOCCENT, what's the status of San Diego?"

_"Coronado and Point Loma are fully evacuated. Mainland is sixty percent clear one mile from the shoreline," _said Tendo._ "Smell something? Want us to run Chrome down there to drive him off?_"

"No!" Raleigh exclaimed. He felt Yancy's surprise flicker around him, then his brother caught his intention. It was risky, yes, but the usual tactics weren't going to work. "We need to run this bastard inshore."

There was a pause, then Marshall Ramirez was on the com. "_Gipsy, the point of these deployments is to keep the kaiju OFF shore."_

"Respectfully, ma'am, the point is a dead kaiju," Yancy countered. "Raleigh's right; we're not gonna intercept this thing in the water, he's too fast. When he went over the islets in Hawaii, he was flopping around like a fish. We need to pin him on land."

Clawhook was starting to aim towards shore again. If he didn't change direction yet again, he'd go into San Diego Bay, and maybe they could cut him off from going back out to sea.

There was a long silence on the coms, but Raleigh was already starting to think it was time to let up on the jets and let Clawhook think he was getting away. Yancy was more inclined to wait for permission to try such a radical tactic, but they were running out of time.

"We've been deployed eight hours already. Something's gotta give," Raleigh said in frustration.

The com buzzed. "_Rangers, this is Marshall Ana Ramirez, you have permission to drive the target ashore. Keep him out of the residential regions if at all possible; the lower peninsula of Point Loma or the airfields on Coronado_."

Well, at least she wouldn't let them take the fall for it if this blew up in their faces. "Copy that, ma'am!" They veered to the west to cut off the kaiju's escape, and Clawhook _finally _took the bait and headed into San Diego Bay, leaving the open ocean behind.

_Gotta catch him before he hits Shoreline Park - _"Full power!" They threw everything into the jets, and the kaiju seemed to suddenly realize he was running out of water - and his speed advantage. He veered west towards the shore of Point Loma, and started to clamber up the beach, but the hilly terrain hindered him, and finally _finally, _they were on him from behind.

With a joint roar of challenge, they snagged back legs and fishlike tail and dragged the kaiju sideways into the sand. Clawhook roared in rage, or maybe fear, but he had no choice but to fight now, and his claws were indeed hooked. Yancy yelled in pain as the bastard folded himself in half and slashed across Gipsy's right hip, then sent punishing kicks into their stomach. Luckily, most of them struck below the reactor.

Coughing and grunting, trying to keep their breath, they fought to pin him down, and Raleigh slammed his hand down on Clawhook's upper arm while Yancy began charging his cannon. "Hit it! Hit him in the stomach!"

"Hang on - " The charge completed, but even at nearly point-blank range, the writhing monster twisted himself out of the way of most of the plasma, though he did roar in agony as he took burns down his side, and worse, the discharge so close unbalanced them off of him. _"FUCK!_"

Like a mutant seal, his body glistening wet and oozing blue, burned black where the plasma had winged him, the kaiju went flopping down the shore and lunged back into the bay. There was no time to think. They pushed off the hillside and simply jumped after him.

Slick, leathery hide slipped from their hands, but they managed to keep him from aiming at the mouth of the bay, and instead, he went across towards Coronado, its surface flat with runways. They plunged after him and tried to shove him up onto the shore, but he wasn't about to leave the water that gave him such an advantage in speed and maneuvering. They pounded him with their fists and tore at him every time they managed to close their hands on his flesh, but he kept squirming free.

"_Gipsy, do you need backup?_"

"Damn it, probably," they panted in unison. "Somebody fast, Vulcan or Hydra."

"_Uh-oh... guys, you okay?_"

"Huh?" They scrambled through the shallows and tried to physically throw the bastard onto land. At least it stopped him from getting past them back into open water, but they nearly got hooked claws in the face for their trouble. "Shit..."

_" - been going over twelve hours, we're into the danger zone, sir!_"

"_Gipsy, we're bringing in backup. You're not going to hold this handshake for much longer," _said LOCCENT.

"Hurry up, then," they mumbled and kept fighting. Couldn't let him get away, couldn't risk him running out to sea or going up into the city proper. They managed to pin him against some pylons and charged their left cannon - whose cannon? Well, didn't matter really - but he writhed free and they managed only another glancing blow.

But the pain of getting a plasma discharge to the shoulder threw the kaiju into a panic, and he simply rushed backwards - finally moving onto the shore over the flat runways. Yes, _yes, _here they - he - Raleigh - Yancy - they could...

_"Gipsy! Raleigh, Yancy, you're starting to destabilize!"_

"Almost got him..."

"Almost got him..."

They scrambled out of the water - flat ground under his/their feet again, but they felt off-kilter and off-balance, like they were drunk. But Cabrón wasn't suited to moving fast onshore either, and he was in pain too. They staggered after him and simply fell on him, trying to pin him with their full weight.

He writhed and slashed, and they had one hand desperately fending off his claws and they charged the other cannon - something seemed to be pulling from inside their heads - but so close, so close...

"Cannon charging..."

"Charging..."

"_This is Chrome Brutus, neural handshake complete. ETA eleven minutes, hang on, Gipsy, just hang on!"_

They planted Raleigh's foot on the kaiju's neck and jammed Yancy's cannon into its stomach - roaring in sheer effort, but the discharge hit, once, twice, three times, deep into Clawhook's torso.

... It wasn't moving anymore. They struggled to focus on the HUD display as it blurred in and out of existence in front of them... signature?

"Signature?"

"Signature?"

Out of synch. Off balance.

_" - n you hear me, Gipsy? No signature! You got the bastard, no signature!"_

_"Rangers, this is Marshall Ramirez, I need you to move away from that carcass and power down immediately! Gipsy? Beckets, do either of you hear me?"_

Couldn't... Raleigh - or Yancy - couldn't remember... what were they supposed to do now?

A calm, impersonal voice told them, "Warning: Neural handshake destabilizing."

What did that mean? "T-Tendo?" one of them murmured.

"_Guys? Guys, I'm here. What do you need?"_

Couldn't remember. Just... Tendo, his voice when they were... where were they? "D-don't... feel so good..."

_"Oh shit, sir – "_

_" __- out of – "_

_" __- deactivate them remotely - off the controls – "_

_" __- Raleigh, Yancy, I need you to focus!"_

Something they were supposed to be doing now, but couldn't remember... but it was happening, something else was in control now... the drift draining away and they were so, so heavy... not floating like before... falling... melting, losing all shape and form... he wanted... they wanted... _RaleighYancy_...

The drift space was gone, and the pod silent around them - his hands moved automatically. He was dimly aware of voices, tinny in the distance in his his ears, but couldn't make any sense of the words - the rig bracing him upright detached, but without it, he had no chance - he fell, and plummeted into darkness before he ever felt himself hit the ground.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon: **__Our heroes recover from their third kill. Destabilizing has an effect that even the experts didn't anticipate, and before he's even fully aware, Yancy Becket has some words he wants to say to Stacker Pentecost in __**Chapter Thirty-Eight: Set Thine House In Order**__._

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Pilots of Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark-3, Australian/Indonesian sisters in their late 20s, graduated Class 2016-B of the Jaeger Academy with the Beckets

Kenneth Gould and Robert "Bobby" Kanda: Pilots of Mammoth Apostle, America's second Mark-4, National Guardsman in their early 30s. Ken is African-American, Bobby is Japanese-American.

Jiro and Hayase Shindo: Pilots of Tidal Dragon, Japan's Mark-2 Jaeger, foster siblings. Severely injured from radiation poisoning in battle and retired for the same reasons as Stacker Pentecost and Tamsin Sevier. Jiro has now died of the complications.

Marshall Ana Ramirez: Commanding Officer of the Los Angeles Shatterdome, former US Army, Mexican-American in her 40s

Marshall Blake Ketteridge: Commanding Officer of the Sydney Shatterdome, Australian Air Force in his early 60s

Marshall Vincent Gagnon: Commanding Officer of the Jaeger Academy and Anchorage Shatterdome, former Canadian Air Force in his late 50s.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's public relations representative, Mexican-American in her 60s, team den mother.

Darrell Sullivan: Romeo Blue's public relations representative, African-American in his 40s.

Christian Warner: one of Gipsy Danger's drivesuit technicians, African-American from Atlanta, Georgia, late 20s, attended the Jaeger Academy with his sister, Chloe, but was not drift compatible enough to make pilot.

Chloe Warner: Christian's half-sister, transferred to K-Watch in Hawaii after they failed to make pilot, remains a close friend of the Beckets

Valentina (Tina) Medina: successor pilot of Whiskey Gamma, one of Gipsy Danger's strike troop command choppers. Part of the crew that replaced twelve of Gipsy's support personnel who died in the aftermath of the battle with Hardship. Mexican-American from Corpus Christi, Texas, mid-30s, active duty US Marines.


	38. Set Thine House In Order

_**Author's Notes:**__ Many thanks to everyone for all the wonderful reviews and feedback! This is the penultimate chapter of this tale! The final chapter should be up in a couple of weeks (after my latest round of beastly work deadlines) shortly before Christmas. Then begins the next installment in Generation K: _Aurora Australis_, which is my take on the back-story of the Hansens and the prelude to the movie._

_**Canon Note: **__ The title of this chapter comes from a Bible quote, but it's actually a reference to the verse as quoted in Hermann Wouk's famous World War II novel, __War and Remembrance__, sequel to __The Winds of War__. Anyone who's read it or seen the magnificent miniseries based on it may get the theme - it's quite sad. Anybody recognize it?_

**Chapter Thirty-Eight: Set Thine House In Order**

_July 24, 2019…  
>Los Angeles Shatterdome…<em>

"Raleigh, wait, don't disengage!" Tendo shouted, but it was no use. He doubted Rals or Yance could even hear him, and they were probably moving on autopilot.

The rig had unlocked with the deactivation of the handshake. _Note to self: get J-Tech to put in a protocol that it DOESN'T unlock when we do an emergency remote power-down. _With the touch of a button, it released Raleigh, and the younger Becket simply slid to the floor.

Yancy's vitals were stuttering no less than his brother's, and his heartrate spiked as he sensed Raleigh's collapse. "_Ral..." _he breathed, fumbling at his rig. _"Rals?"_

_Damn it, _thought Tendo, only able to watch the readings and hope for the best_. _ But while Yancy fell too once he was out of the rig, the medical readouts showed he was still conscious - if only just.

"What would've happened if they'd completely destabilized?" Cady asked the newly-arrived Dr. Lightcap, who was now watching the readouts with grim eyes.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "Probably this. They'd lose coherence and pass out, and if that kaiju was still alive, he'd have them helpless."

The neural readouts from Yancy's suit showed him too slipping into unconsciousness, and there was no more sound from Gipsy's conn-pod. But Tendo clung to the reassuring lines on the vitals monitors, showing that however drained and exhausted the Beckets might be, they were alive, and not in distress.

When Whiskey Alpha's R&R crew got in through the hatch ten minutes later, they found Raleigh sprawled on the floor at the feet of his rig. Yancy had crawled to his little brother's side before collapsing too. "_They're in good shape,_" reported Alpha's commander, Hien Nguyen. "_I'm showing all Gipsy's drop gear intact and functional. We can start first aid if you want to lift her out now, get her and the Rangers to the Shatterdome together."_

"Is that any faster than evacuating the pilots first?" asked Pentecost, frowning at Marshall Ramirez.

"_Getting them out of their suits unconscious and out of the escape hatch will take close to an hour, sir. Close to the same."_

The Marshalls exchanged a quick look, then nodded in unison as if they were drifting. "Then get Jaeger and all back here. Lift crews, as quick as you can," Ramirez ordered.

_"Copy that, sir. Drop team Beta, moving in. Secure the pilots for liftoff._"

Tendo supposed moving the Jaeger back to the Dome would be easier on the Beckets than manhandling them out of Gipsy's escape hatch... but given how completely unconscious they both were through the ride, he doubted it made much difference to them.

He and Team Gipsy were waiting with Team Vulcan when all the brain scans finally completed and the Becket boys were wheeled into the infirmary. "Are they in any pain?" asked Devi Hassan anxiously.

"It probably feels like one hell of a hangover," said Dr. Lightcap. "I'm not seeing any brain damage, just severe exhaustion. We'll give them some analgesics and a mild trank just to be sure."

"How long was their handshake?" Suze asked.

"Just over fourteen hours total," said Cady at once. "The medics called it just like with Romeo Blue: they synch up completely for the last couple of hours, then it starts breaking down. Bruce and Trevin were right on the edge of it when they took Hardship down. Our boys went over the edge."

"We shouldn't have let it go that far," said Indra Hassan, scowling at his tablet. "We should have been in there backing them up sooner, a proper team. This cut it too close."

"Hindsight's twenty-twenty, old friend," Tendo sighed. "I mean, you're right, but," he smiled wearily and gestured to the unconscious Beckets. "They'll be okay. They got it done. Third kill!"

"Has anyone ever _had _three kills before?" demanded Christian Warner.

"Nope." The stress and anxiety of the close call was now being replaced by giddiness. People started counting on their fingers, and Team Gipsy was exchanging delighted looks with their fellows. Even Doc Lightcap was grinning as she looked up from her readouts at the Beckets' bedside. "Sergio and I have two. The Jessops had two, Romeo and Horizon each have two." She brushed a hand gently over Raleigh's hair, smiling at him and his sleeping brother. "Hold your heads up, Team Gipsy. You've got the best team in the world."

They managed to contain themselves not to erupt into cheers and applause right there in the infirmary. "Go celebrate and get some rest," Carolina Olivares told them, giving multiple shoves to everyone within arm's reach. "Our boys aren't going to wake up for at least a day, and after that, we're going to be very busy."

But pretty much everyone in the crew had to hug her, hug Doc Lightcap, hug the Hassans, hug the medics, and hug everybody else in the vicinity who stayed still long enough.

And Tendo found that he wasn't the only one who wandered back to the outside of Gipsy's bay and found himself in front of that little shelf they'd installed in the wall with a fisherman's cap and twelve uniform nametags. Out of the way but still easy to find, impossible to enter the bay without passing them. Funny how it still stung and burned inside to look at this, to see those names and those faces in his mind and know they weren't here - but that he could still smile so easily in front of it. He led the group salute to their absent friends.

"We got the bastard, Gamma Twelve. Gipsy's got her third kill, and our boys are okay," said Hien, eyes wet, but smiling no less broadly than the rest of them. "Wish you were here."

"They are," said Christian, with absolute conviction in his voice. "I know they are."

There were lots of different religions represented in Team Gipsy, and different levels of faith. Tendo knew their Becket boys were pretty much agnostic. Some of the crew were atheists, others intensely devoted to a particular faith and no other. Not everyone would believe that...

... but judging by the smiles, he knew that no matter what they believed, everyone imagined it right now. _We did you proud._

* * *

><p><em>July 25, 2019…<br>Los Angeles Shatterdome…_

Caitlin made her report to the brass and commanding officers on the condition of the Beckets. It inspired much relief, albeit some confusion from those who had trouble following the science. "How is it that this team destabilized two hours earlier than the Gages did?" asked Marshall Ketteridge.

"It's useless to try to compare one handshake with another, sir," she explained patiently. "It depends entirely on the individuals and the nuances of their handshake. All the theoretical material we had up to now is at least supported by the results: the Gages are identical twins, exact same age, exact same DNA, which lent itself to a longer handshake stability. They've also been drifting longer with the Beckets; experience may play a role."

"How are the Beckets?" asked Marshall Gagnon. "You don't think the destabilization caused any brain damage?"

She shook her head. "So far, I'm not seeing any indicators of injury, although to my knowledge, this is the closest any team has come to true destabilization. We can't rule out the possibility of damage."

Secretary General Krieger mused, "Perhaps we should ask for volunteers and experiment with it so we have a better idea of the result."

For a few seconds, she just blinked at him, then it was all she could do not to hit the screen. _Are you fucking joking?! _"Sir... " _Seriously?! _"The point of this work is to_ prevent_ destabilization, not experiment with it. We already know the very clear warning signs: extreme synchronization to the point of loss of sense of self. That's the moment that the handshake needs to be ended as soon as possible, not push it to its limits and take notes on whether or not the Rangers die!"

"I agree with Dr. Lightcap," said Marshall Pentecost, quickly echoed by Gagnon, Ramirez, and Yamamoto. "There's no call for an experiment like that, and far too much danger. The Gages took six weeks to recover from a sixteen hour handshake, and the Beckets are still unconscious. Necessity may force an extreme strain to the pilots, but not curiosity."

To her intense relief, Krieger dropped that stupid idea, or she would have started giving personal opinions of his intelligence. "What about Gipsy Danger?" Jasper asked. "Are we going to need to run her up here for repairs?"

"I don't think so; she actually sustained only superficial damage," said Ramirez. "We'll have an inspection team take a close look at her, but I think we can handle the repairs in-house."

Gagnon smirked. "And you're not giving the number one ship in the world up without a fight, eh?" Ramirez kept a neutral expression, but didn't deny it. "On the other hand, their fellow Rangers have raised concerns that they were left to fight alone for too long without backup."

The way Ketteridge rolled his eyes instantly raised Caitlin's hackles. "Or the Hassans are tetchy because they weren't deployed with their boyfriends."

Ramirez and Pentecost beat her to it, chorusing, "That's inappropriate," and glowering at the Australian. Ramirez took the lead. "Yes, the Beckets are their friends, but they and their LOCCENT crew also raised some very apt points about the level of deterioration that went on before backup was called in. As fellow Rangers who depend on the leadership to provide the support they need, they have ever reason in the world to speak up."

Several of the other Commanding Officers were nodding. "They're right. We've focused on team deployment for a reason: to minimize casualties and injury," said Admiral Yamamoto. "We had two other Jaegers within fifty miles, and while Gipsy herself wasn't badly damaged, her pilots were pushed to their limits."

"We should have backup ready and deployed to engage at will whenever possible," agreed Gagnon.

The UN reps exchanged glances, and one of the Americans actually said with a straight face, "But multi-Jaeger deployment is necessarily twice as expensive."

"You prefer the expense of a destroyed Jaeger, a kaiju reaching shore, and the cost of each and every human life we lose?" growled Jasper.

Jasper Schoenfeld did have his moments, Caitlin mused to herself. All of the Dome commanders were nodding, and quite a few of the brass were shooting glares at the ones who were so concerned about cost above all else.

"It doesn't have to be a question of throwing everything available at every kaiju," the K-Watch commander pointed out. "Based on the Serizawa category of the kaiju and its range of motion - which we'll have plenty of time to observe before most of them approach land - we can make a recommendation on the Jaeger response."

"Two deployed in San Diego Bay could probably have finished Clawhook several hours sooner," said Marshall Ramirez. "It's not just a question of size. Yamarashi is still the biggest on record, but Gipsy Danger and Yankee Star handled him well. Hardship would have merited a third deployment, and we might have saved Diablo Intercept and his pilots, not to mention nearly a thousand people in Concepción."

"Let's form an exploratory committee on group deployment tactics," proposed Krieger.

_That's what you always do. We must have at least twenty of them by now,_ Caitlin thought.

She was relieved when the meeting broke up and she could return to the brain scans in peace. The medics kicked nearly everyone out of the infirmary on the second night except for one Team Gipsy representative permitted to remain with the Beckets – although there was almost a riot over who got the honors.

The medics had a point, though: the Beckets weren't the only ones worn down by that long run. Tendo Choi fell asleep at the bedside, but Caitlin let him be. She and the medics didn't think it was very likely that either Ranger would wake up anytime soon.

Yancy surprised her. She was weaving through the graveyard shift of drowsy nurses, thinking about turning in herself, when she realized one of the occupants of the improvised double bed was looking at her. "Hey!" she whispered, going quickly to his side. Raleigh was still comatose, and Yancy didn't seem exactly coherent. "How're you feeling?"

Squinting even in the dim lights, he cast a dazed look around and finally murmured, "Wha' happened?"

"You bagged your third kill, Yancy," she told him. "Clawhook. Remember?" Whether they would remember those last events, she wasn't quite sure, but plenty of people would be happy to describe it, and there were lots of videos available. _Here's hoping they remember. It'd be disappointing if the heroes of the hour can't hang onto their own victory. _"Raleigh's fine," she assured him, sensing his anxiety as he shifted towards his brother. "You pushed the handshake until it started to destabilize, but I've finished examining both of you. No damage that resting won't fix."

There wasn't a single pair (or trio) of Rangers whose interactions didn't tend to make her smile, but the sibling pairs could be especially adorable. Caitlin smiled to herself and patted Yancy's shoulder as he touched Raleigh's face, searching him. He didn't say anything else, and Caitlin didn't bother either. He fell asleep again in minutes.

Tugging Yancy's blanket over him, she gave Tendo a shake. "I think you better call in back-up, Mr. Choi."

"Uh? Oh... yeah, thanks, Doc." Tendo shuffled to his feet and looked the Beckets over. "Did Yancy wake up?"

"For about thirty seconds, long enough to make sure Raleigh was present and accounted for." She steered Tendo towards the door. "Go on, call in someone who's gotten more than four hours of sleep in the past three days."

"Don't think we've got anyone with that qualification," Tendo replied, yawning heavily. He gave her a sly grin. "And you're a fine one to talk, ma'am."

She chuckled. "Guilty."

* * *

><p>Stacker was in a good mood. K-Watch and Tactics had enough personnel crossover that they'd ironed out an initial deal for a report on deployment recommendations based on "assessed threat level" of the kaiju. The casualty count from the Clawhook incident had set an all-time low for the entire Pacific Ocean.<p>

He had just confirmed Mako's travel arrangements to meet him in Alaska for three weeks before her autumn school term. She had asked if she could see some of the Jaegers, or (better yet) meet some of the Rangers.

Stacker was always the first one to remind staff and families that the mechs and their pilots were _not _tourist attractions, but he knew plenty of insider introductions went on, and... well... as long as they weren't on duty, perhaps he could happen to cross paths with the Gages. They and most of their fellows enjoyed meeting children away from cameras and reporters.

As he headed for his quarters to get some sleep, he noticed a figure in hospital scrubs shuffling down the hall out of the corner of his eye. The graveyard shift was changing; groggy medics and orderlies stumbling off to bed was a common sight.

Then he stopped so fast that he almost skidded on the concrete floor.

That was no medic. It was Yancy Becket.

"Ranger Becket?" No answer, no indication the young man had heard him. "Yancy?"

Now Yancy turned, sluggish and glassy-eyed, and there was almost no recognition in his gaze. _Good lord. _His eyes were open, so he wasn't sleep-walking... or maybe they could call this drift-walking. Stacker hurried towards him, and saw, to his relief, a little bit of clarity in the Ranger's bleary expression. "What are you doing?"

"I - I don't..." Becket blinked several times. "Sir?"

"I think you should go back to sickbay," Stacker told him. "You and your brother need to rest."

Becket frowned, looking suspicious to the point that Stacker wondered if he even knew who he was talking to or where he was. But then Yancy muttered, "I remember now."

"Remember what?" Maybe he should page a medic. Somebody'd fallen asleep on the job if a patient had managed to wander out of the infirmary without being released.

Yancy's response stopped him cold, and his eyes, bright as if he was feverish, were suddenly fully focused on Stacker's face. "I remember what you told me after Yamarashi."

Now Stacker was the one feeling a bit disoriented. "Oh." There wasn't much else to say. How very... interesting. The young Ranger had never mentioned that conversation again, but hadn't betrayed any discomfort in Stacker's presence afterwards. Stacker had concluded that he didn't remember; recalling such a breakdown would have lent even someone of Yancy Becket's reserve a little awkwardness.

But Yancy wasn't awkward now that he did remember. Rather, he seemed... angry. "You were lying. About Raleigh. You didn't care what he wanted. Y'just wanted to make sure we kept piloting."

This was quite awkward. But if Stacker hadn't been about to censure a drift-impaired Ranger for breaking down, he couldn't very well do it for lashing out. _Especially not when he... might just have a point. _"I wasn't lying to you about your brother or his skills. The last two years should be proof for you." _I shouldn't even be arguing with you about this. _What good was it to defend himself to a soldier who might as well be falling-down drunk? But Stacker felt driven to do it, because this soldier was echoing a bitter little voice deep within his own conscience.

"You're a real chess master, aren't you?" Yancy breathed. "You talk about self-control and discipline, make sure we all know we're not supposed to act like humans, but you're no better than us, are you? You can't stand Raleigh."

"That's not true. I don't hate Raleigh. I don't even dislike him."

And Tamsin and Luna were back in his mind's eyes and ears, watching the show. _Ohhh, Stacks, that's a lie!_

_All right, very well, I think he's obnoxious, but that's true of many people._ "Your brother's a fine pilot and a good man, I've no doubt of that." When he told the truth, Luna and Tamsin didn't seem to laugh at him in his memory, and his conscience didn't sting so much.

"All of us're good pilots," Yancy countered, swaying on his feet. Stacker caught his elbow. "But people still die... two've died alone now."

What was he... oh. Stacker managed not to cringe. He was thinking of Tacit Ronin's Duc Jessop, and Tidal Dragon's Hayase Shindo. Two Rangers had now outlived their partners: Kaori Jessop had died of cancer, and Jiro Shindo had died from the radiation complications only weeks ago. Hayase Shindo was too ill from her own radiation exposure for public appearances, but her name and likeness were paraded around in Asia, and Duc Jessop was still being trotted around the publicity circuit. There was a lot of grumbling within the Ranger ranks about reducing these people to figureheads after they'd lost what Jaeger pilots treasured most.

So Yancy's newest meltdown was triggered by that resentment of authority, of the propaganda being perpetuated at the expense of men and women who'd given their lives in this war.

_It won't do any good to point out that I spoke against that publicity, against the video games and the merchandising. I'm one of the leadership, so I'm guilty with the majority. Maybe more so, because out of all the Marshalls, I alone have been a Ranger. _

Yancy would have seen Tamsin's name in the records, would remember the Onibaba engagement from the analyses, but Stacker and his supporters had kept her condition quiet, as they had Kaori's and still did Duc's and Hayase's until the day the radiation finally claimed them. A part of him badly wanted to confide, no matter how improper it was. _I do understand. I do. You're _not _alone in trying to protect your partner. I'm still doing it and I'll never set foot in a Jaeger again._

Now that he'd puzzled out this semi-delirious point, he could see what was coming next. That was good, because it gave him time to brace himself for the pain and sheer horror in Yancy's voice. "What'll happen to him, if anything happens to me?"

Stacker Pentecost was not one for giving false reassurances or false hope. But he felt an impulse to do it now as he hadn't since Luna had been alive. The desire to insist that it would be all right, and everything would work out. _I can't do that, because it's not true. Not even to Mako, and a little girl ought to feel safe in this world. Teenagers and children ought to not grow up in terror and grief, ought to not become soldiers before they're even of age. _

_Perhaps I'm hard on your brother because I'm more worried for you. That he'll overreach and get himself killed the same way that she... that you'll be the one left alone and empty._

It hadn't stopped him from pressing Yancy back from the edge after Yamarashi; the elder Becket wasn't entirely wrong. Stacker had manipulated the situation, appealed to his pride in his brother just as he'd cultivated the recruits and the candidates to push themselves to their limits and beyond. And he'd resented it a year ago when Raleigh had still been pushing in Lima - ready to punish the very monster he had created.

_He's not a monster, _he told himself defensively. _He's a Ranger, and a bloody good one. They both are. They're the best team in the world. _The impulsive, emotional youth and the determined, protective elder brother. Stacker Pentecost prided himself in the thickness of his own skin, yet this pair seemed to get under it again and again. It was rather silly of him to have to wonder why.

He almost... _almost _told Yancy right then. _I'm an elder brother too. I had a little sister who wanted to fly and slay dragons and never, ever let anything hold her back. I lost her, and then I lost my Jaeger, and I may still lose my partner. I understand. _

Yancy was swaying again, and Stacker caught his other arm, but his hand closed hard on Stacker's wrist. "'f anything happens," he growled. "You better do right by him. Don' let them... use him like that. You said, I can't protect him - you said! You're the fucking _Marshall_, so you better. Protect him better than the others."

_God, what an indictment, more than you can even know. _Part of him wanted to brush it off, to dismiss this as delirious, overwrought ravings... but he couldn't. A voice in the back of his mind, part-Tamsin, part-Luna, part his own conscience, it wouldn't allow it. Yancy Becket might be in drift shock, but somehow, his half-conscious mind had tapped into something that he'd completely missed awake - and it was very accurate.

Stacker opened his mouth - and Yancy's eyes lost focus. Time was up, and whatever strange part of his subconscious had taken over, it had failed along with his strength. His eyes fluttered closed, and Stacker caught him as he fell. The boy weighed a solid ton; Stacker barely managed to keep him from hitting the floor like a sack of bricks. Down the hall, he heard an alarm going off in the infirmary.

_Really, it took you this long to notice you're missing a patient?_ Looking at the unconscious young man as he laid his jacket beneath Yancy's head, he felt too drained inside to muster any more irritation. Tapping his earpiece, he called the infirmary. "This is Marshall Pentecost; I'm in the corridor outside the gym. I think I have what you're looking for."

"Oh, thank GOD!" someone exclaimed. "Found him!"

Stacker shook his head and rang off. Kneeling next to his charge, he found Yancy's pulse evening out and his breathing easy. _I wonder if he'll remember _this _conversation. _If he were a gambling man, he'd deem the odds quite long.

He would have to let Dr. Lightcap and the medics know what had happened: Ranger Becket had wandered out of the infirmary under the influence of the destabilization shock and confronted Pentecost about a conversation they'd had when he was in a previous drift shock. Beyond that... the substance wasn't important.

And even if it had been, well... _self-discipline in all things. Self-control. But we are all still human. _So he spoke words that no one could hear, to a man who wouldn't remember even if he could have heard... and might as well have made a blood oath before a million witnesses.

"I promise, Ranger. I promise."

He was calmly monitoring Yancy's vitals when the medics hurried around the corner, then stepped away to let them swoop down and carry their runaway patient back to the infirmary.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon: **__The finale chapter of _Aurora Borealis_. Raleigh and Yancy face one final, painful obstacle as they find themselves christened the most successful Rangers to date. But the enemy isn't a kaiju, only their own drained minds after pushing the drift to its limit in **Chapter Thirty-Nine: He Ain't Heavy**._

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Original Character Guide**

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Pilots of Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark-3, Australian/Indonesian sisters in their late 20s, graduated Class 2016-B of the Jaeger Academy with the Beckets.

Indra Hassan: Devi and Susanti's elder cousin, late 30s, failed at drifting but trained as a LOCCENT technician, now Support Chief of Vulcan Specter.

Jiro and Hayase Shindo: Pilots of Tidal Dragon, Japan's Mark-2 Jaeger, foster siblings. Severely injured from radiation poisoning in battle and retired for the same reasons as Stacker Pentecost and Tamsin Sevier. Jiro has now died of the complications.

Marshall Ana Ramirez: Commanding Officer of the Los Angeles Shatterdome, former US Army, Mexican-American in her 40s

Marshall Blake Ketteridge: Commanding Officer of the Sydney Shatterdome, Australian Air Force in his early 60s

Marshall Vincent Gagnon: Commanding Officer of the Jaeger Academy and Anchorage Shatterdome, former Canadian Air Force in his late 50s.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's public relations representative, Mexican-American in her 60s, team den mother.

Cady Spencer: one of Gipsy Danger's LOCCENT technicians along with Tendo Choi, Filipino-American from Seattle, late 20s, attended the Jaeger Academy with Tendo and the Beckets.

Christian Warner: one of Gipsy Danger's drivesuit technicians, African-American from Atlanta, Georgia, late 20s, attended the Jaeger Academy with his sister, Chloe, but was not drift compatible enough to make pilot.

Hien Nguyen: one of Gipsy Danger's Strike Troopers with Team Whiskey Alpha, Vietnamese-American, late 20s.


	39. He Ain't Heavy

_**Author's Notes: **__ This is it, dear readers, the final chapter of this installment of __Generation K__! Many thanks to all of you for your reviews, praise, and constructive criticism! It means the world to me. Never hesitate to post questions and comments about this fic and the series on my review pages or my Tumblr! See the end of the fic for some tidbits about the next story in the saga__! Chapter Six of _Tales From The Front Lines_ should be up next weekend.  
><em>

**Chapter Thirty-Nine: He Ain't Heavy**

_July 26, 2019…  
>Los Angeles Shatterdome…<em>

"Y'know... nobody warned us that being heroes meant feeling like shit while everyone else gets to party," Raleigh observed four days after Clawhook. "It's no fair!"

Everyone on Team Gipsy was pretty happy. Carolina was running around like a maniac juggling competing appearance requests. The medics kept shoving them into the brain scanners, and the crew was designing a new set of T-shirts. But neither Raleigh nor Yancy Becket could seem to stay awake more than four hours at a time.

In some ways, post-Clawhook recovery was more uncomfortable than post-Yamarashi, even though both Raleigh and Yancy were in physically good shape. Destabilization shock wasn't like drift shock. It was definitely worse.

In those last moments in Gipsy, instead of floating and falling, Raleigh and Yancy had felt like they were melting, their brains losing shape and form. Worse was that now, the usual grounding techniques weren't working. They both woke panicking multiple times, right next to each other, able to "feel" physically, but not mentally, not _right_.

The crew told him that Yancy had even gotten up and wandered out of the infirmary on the second night, completely confused. Yance didn't remember that, apart from a general sensation that he'd been looking for something. "You were right there, but... it was like you weren't, and I had to find the rest of you. That's all I remember." The medics said he'd been found passed out again in the hallway.

It was Caitlin Lightcap who proposed the solution for the aftermath of destabilization: another drift. "We need to test the handshake anyway. I don't think there's any risk, and once your brains fall back into the normal pattern of the pons connection, you'll re-adjust."

They didn't talk about it much with the crew, and definitely not with the psychs. Just Caitlin and Tendo and Cady, since they were the LOCCENT guys who monitored the handshake and might have an inkling of what was going on. (And Carolina, because she hardly ever left their bedside, and they didn't want her to.)

"It'll get better soon, bro," Tendo reassured him when he lurched awake in another cold sweat, searching for his brother despite Yancy being asleep at his side, trying not to yell or cry in sheer frustration. "Doc says you guys'll be clear for the pons tomorrow morning."

_What if it doesn't work? What if we've broken it? How are we supposed to live like this? _

"Just hold on tonight," Carolina said, wiping his face. Yancy was tossing fitfully in his sleep, and Raleigh was clinging to him and _still _not entirely certain that his brother was really here.

"Why's it feel like this?" he muttered. _Yancy's here, I'm here, what the hell is wrong with our brains? _

"You charted new territory with this kill," said Tendo. "Nobody's ever taken a handshake to the point of destabilizing like that. Nobody's ever had three kills either," he added, punching Raleigh lightly. Raleigh had to force a smile. "But Cady and I've been looking at Doc Lightcap's scans; she thinks you'll link back up just fine, and I'm not seeing anything that says otherwise either even if I'm not a genius neurologist. There've been theories before now that the handshake could be therapeutic after a traumatic fight."

Something in Cady's expression made Raleigh curious. "What?"

His friend shrugged, looking thoughtfully at Tendo. "You remember we tested back at the Academy?" Cady mused. "Where'd we top out... seventy percent?"

"Yeah, something like that," Tendo confirmed. "Why?"

Cady smiled, looking from Tendo to Raleigh and the dozing Yancy. "I thought the handshake was the most uncomfortable thing ever. It's just weird, imagining it could be therapeutic."

"I get that," Raleigh admitted. "It wasn't easy at first. We got used to it. And then..." Was this an addiction? Something that'd felt so painful at first, now they were both ready to fall apart because they didn't have it? "Drift shock hurts, but not like this. If we're touching, we're fine after combat. Now it's like everything's... broken, and..." _I'm scared. I just want to feel safe again. _

He didn't say that. There wasn't anyone he'd say that to who wasn't Yancy, and by now, under normal circumstances - normal meaning the way things had been in their minds since they started drifting - Yancy would _know_ without him having to say it. Even without a full-blown ghost drift, he and Yancy could sense so much of each other, anticipate, understand, commiserate. Raleigh could easily work out what was bothering Yance as his brother tossed and murmured in his sleep, and Yancy held Raleigh when they were awake... but there was this dissonance, this uncertainty, like jagged edges on a connection that had once been so smooth.

All the other crews were now safely back at their Shatterdomes, and the Hassans were engaged in a campaign of half-wheedling, half-defiance to put off going back to Sydney long enough to stay in LA for Raleigh and Yancy's recovery. It was a relief having their old friends here with them, two women who'd gone through pons training and all the stresses that went with it along with them, who'd mentored them as elders in so many ways even when Raleigh and Yancy had higher scores in the simulator.

Devi in particular was mothering the hell out of them whenever Carolina was called away. (Any other time, Raleigh would've thought that was weird, given her on-again, off-again thing with Yance, but now he was too distracted to care.) Indra had come with them to command their LOCCENT crew, and was comparing notes with Cady and Tendo.

They were nervous about it and so were the crews, judging by the large group that gathered silently in the sim lab. Well, Raleigh supposed he couldn't really blame anybody; he and Yance still looked like the walking dead. But he was so desperate that he'd try anything, anything to end this sense of mental _wrongness_.

Yancy's hand was on his arm as they waited for the techs to finish calibrating the pons caps. Raleigh put a hand on his brother's shoulder, trying not to fidget or get agitated... it wasn't right, it wasn't _right. _He could feel Yancy's hand, feel his shoulder, even feel him in the ghost drift... but disjointed, _off, _like a poor copy or a surreal dream.

"Ready, guys?"

Raleigh swallowed hard and nodded. _Please let this work..._ "Yeah."

"Yeah, ready," said Yancy.

Over Dr. Lightcap's shoulder, Raleigh noticed Marshall Pentecost now watching too, his brow furrowed as if this was worrying him as much as it was the others. "Five... four... three... two... one..."

* * *

><p>They plunged into drift space... it washed up around them like the ocean and they were trying to clean off burning Kaiju Blue from their iron skin, cool and soothing...<p>

_"Ready to step into my head, kid?" Yancy had been ready to deny he was nervous, that first day of full testing, but then he realized there was no point; Raleigh would be in his head in a few minutes, and he'd know it was a lie..._

_"No point in not wanting me to know anything anymore..." Sitting on the floor of their room afterward... drained... tired... hurting. Would they be hurting so much if Mom hadn't died, if Dad hadn't gone and they hadn't had to give up on Jazmine, if Diane hadn't thought they were scum?_

_"You're still the best brother ever..." He'd meant to be snarky, joking his way out of serious things, but he made Yancy cry. He felt awful, but then Yancy hugged him so hard it knocked the wind out of him and they were hanging onto each other for all they were worth and it was perfect._

_"You think maybe we can do this?"_

_"Yeah, we can do this."_

_We did it. Yamarashi, Grindylow, Clawhook. We did it. _

Time and space and feeling, stray thoughts and emotions rushed around them, but unhindered and undamaged again, flowing free - whatever had been blocking it was washed away...

_They were there in the drift space, side-by-side in their rigs in the conn-pod, but in their shared minds, unseen, they clung to each other and cried as Gipsy rolled out of her bay for the first time since Hardship claimed twelve of their friends..._

_"This one's for the Gamma Twelve..._"

_It's okay now. We're okay. We did it._

_Rals? _Raleigh looked through the bluish drift space and found himself swept into Yancy's mental arms. A mental hug in the drift wasn't as good as hugging physically after drift shock, but now, he knew it was real again. Yancy was here, and Raleigh was here, and whatever had been wounded by the destabilized link was healed.

_I love you, baby brother. I should be able to say that outside the drift. I love you so much._

_It's okay, _he whispered back in his mind. There were dozens of people around them and it didn't matter; none of them could hear. _You don't have to say it anywhere else. I know it. You do too, right, old man? _Hell, couldn't he not be snarky once in a while?

But this time Yancy didn't cry. His laughter rippled through the drift like bubbles in the ocean. _It's okay, kiddo. I'm in your brain; I know._

Fuck that; if Yance was willing to say it, even just in the drift, then Raleigh had no right to be self-conscious. _I love you, Yancy-man._

Warmth and relief and tenderness rushed over and between them, back and forth in both directions, and they were buoyant and floating and completely safe. They rose out of it together and broke the surface back into reality, into here and now: Los Angeles, 2019.

_Safe. Together_.

"Neural handshake strong and holding, one hundred percent," said a familiar voice. They blinked, and Tendo and Caitlin and the other techs were grinning at them, and there was applause all around through the speakers, people smiling, clapping each other on the back, hugging in relief. Tendo was grinning and told them _ a la _Han Solo, "I told you it was gonna work! No problem!"

"How do you feel, guys?" Caitlin asked.

They grinned at each other. _We're good. _"We're good." They said it in unison, and everyone cheered.

Caitlin put them through a round of cognitive tests like they were back at the beginning of Term Three, but they grinned and joked through them. It was tiring; the medics kept warning that they were still going to need more recovery time from the physical and mental strain of the fight with Clawhook. Truth be told, neither of them were averse to being shoved back into the infirmary afterwards to go to sleep.

But it was okay, because whatever came next, they were together again. They collapsed onto their shared bed no longer doubting that.

* * *

><p>Devi and Suze and their crew came to hug them (and possibly tuck them in) in farewell, since Sydney's Marshall about to dispatch the Aussie military to haul them back across the lake for desertion. So the four of them crowded onto Yancy and Raleigh's shared bed for a Skype call down to their classmates in Panama.<p>

"_How'd it go?!_" Kennedy and Stephanie demanded.

"The greatest handshake in the world has a clean bill of health," Tendo informed them over the pilots' shoulders. "Our Becket boys are gonna be fine."

The Hydra girls looked a little nostalgic. "_I wish we'd been allowed to just come all the way up there_," Kennedy sighed.

"Well, we're getting dragged back at gunpoint in two hours," said Susanti, ruffling Yancy and Raleigh's hair with each hand. "We've all got jobs to do."

"At the rate things are going, it's only a matter of time," Yancy told them. "We'll all ride together someday."

"Believe it." Cady Spencer reached past the Hassans to knuckle the Beckets' heads. "You guys may have the craziest, scariest job in the world, but it's got its good points. Like mindmeld therapy."

"And the ability to get laid whenever you want!"

"Tendo!" Suze practically crawled across them to swat at him, getting grunts of protest.

Lucky for Tendo, Marshall Pentecost poked his head into the infirmary. "Rangers Hassan, Marshall Ketteridge is on the com for you."

Devi groaned and gave each of the Beckets a one-armed hug. "That's our final warning before the court martial. Come on, Sis. Let's round up the crew and get on the bloody plane."

"_Safe flight, girls!_" said Steph over the Skype. "_Say hello to all the kangaroos for us!"_

"Nyuck nyuck nyuck!"

But as they left, Yancy gazed after them and Pentecost and felt a twinge of anxiety. Raleigh looked at him. "What?"

"Dunno," he murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. "Maybe nothing." His recollection of destabilization shock wasn't any better than his memories of drift shock. It was all hazy, incoherent images and muted voices that he couldn't make out. But just now, his heart had thudded at the sight of Pentecost, as if...

As Tendo and Cady went off to see the Hassans and their crew to the plane, Raleigh was falling asleep fast. Yancy found it ironic that in this particular case, he'd been the restless one who wandered around when he should've been asleep. But now he was wondering just what had gone on when he was under the influence.

Well, once more for old times' sake. He tugged the blanket over his brother and told the nearest nurse, "I'll just be a second."

The crew had told him Pentecost was leaving today too, for Anchorage. Nervously, Yancy hurried down to his office, hoping he hadn't gone yet.

He'd cut it close; the Marshall was coming down the corridor with a briefcase. He raised an eyebrow at Yancy. "You do tend towards walkabouts after this engagement, Ranger Becket."

Yancy felt himself blush. "I think I'm fully awake, sir. But I... uh..." Sheepishly, he stepped closer and lowered his voice. "I don't remember exactly what... happened before." Something changed in Pentecost's face then, confirming Yancy's suspicion that the blurry recollections weren't just from dreams. He _had _talked to Pentecost. Well, he might as well just face whatever he'd said. "Do I owe you any apologies?" _Why do I have this feeling that I was yelling at you? _

To his relief (and surprise), Pentecost actually smiled. "You don't. You were in…some distress, yes. But you were impaired through no fault of your own, and I was well aware of that."

_Crap. That means I did shoot my mouth off. Maybe I'm better off not knowing. _"Thank you, sir," he mumbled, staring at the floor.

"No, Ranger. Thank _you_." Startled, Yancy looked up. Pentecost was no longer smiling, but there was something intense in his gaze. Something familiar, even. "You're a fine pilot, and so is your brother. Exceptional, even, and that's according to a very high standard. You owe no apologies to anyone. Considering that my fellow Marshalls and I should have acted faster to prevent your being overextended, the apologies should be ours."

"No harm done, sir." Yancy relaxed, and pointed out, "Whatever destabilizing did to us, Dr. Lightcap had the fix. We can always find each other in the drift."

"Interesting way to put it."

He shrugged. "Three years in, I'm still learning new things."

"I'm glad to hear it."

_"All personnel. 1730 flight to Anchorage boarding in five minutes."_

Pentecost glanced up, then looked at Yancy. "I'll be teaching at the Academy for several months. After the next engagements, I'd like you and your brother to be reassigned for a few terms. Like the Gages, you now have experience that could be helpful to the candidates."

Yancy couldn't hold back a grin. "Our influence wouldn't be deemed unwholesome?"

Pentecost didn't take the bait. "No more than the Gages' or the Tunaris'." Yancy thought it had to be his imagination or just still lingering exhaustion that made him think the Marshall had a twinkle in his eye. "Get back to the infirmary, Ranger. You still look dead on your feet."

"Aye, sir." Yancy wasn't as good as Raleigh at making a salute look sarcastic, but he tried anyway. "Safe trip."

* * *

><p>When he got back to sickbay, Raleigh was awake, but fortunately not fretting about his whereabouts. To Yancy's surprise, Raleigh was in hushed conversation with Brady Harris. Rals hadn't exactly been avoiding Nikki's cousin, but he'd felt understandably awkward since her death - with Brady and even with the rest of Team Yankee. Now, while they were both looking sad, they seemed to be comfortable talking.<p>

"Hey, there you are!" Tendo pushed himself off the wall and waved a hand in front of Yancy's face. "Did you go drift-walking again?"

Yancy laughed and shoved him. "Nah, not this time. Just wanted to touch base with – someone leaving for Anchorage." He waited until Brady finished up talking with Rals, suspecting this wasn't a conversation for his ears - at least not until the drift. Yankee's PR rep gave him a casual wave as he got up and headed back out, and Yancy returned to his brother's side. "Everything okay?" he asked, glad to be off his feet again.

"Mm-hmm." Raleigh's eyes were distant, but not as depressed as Yancy might have feared. "He... was saying thank-you." He looked at Yancy with a sad smile. "For Nikki. Y'know she was from San Diego. That's where she grew up. If Clawhook had gotten across Coronado, it would've gone right into her Dad's neighborhood."

Yancy tugged his brother against him. "We did them all proud, kiddo. Every time. We'll keep on doing it."

_"It's not like she was the love of my life._" It whispered in their drift memories, half a protest, half a defense, all confusion and doubt. Raleigh still wasn't sure what he was supposed to feel about Nicola Harris, searching for a "right way" in a world where there was no such thing.

_"That doesn't mean you're not allowed to miss her,_" Carolina had told him.

_I miss them all. _The ghost drift was back in full force, although if they'd wanted to talk out loud, they could have. After all, the only people here were Corps personnel, and they understood. Raleigh and Yancy were Rangers. Nobody would judge.

"It's... _Capitaine_ I miss the most, sometimes," Raleigh admitted softly.

"There's nothing wrong with that."

_It was like having a dad again. _He felt Raleigh wince, embarrassed as that thought slipped out, and ruffled his hair.

_That's not wrong either. Antwan said so himself. _"We'll keep it up. For all of them. I, uh, I ran into Marshall Pentecost in the hall. He's going up to the Academy. He wants us to be assigned for some of the second-term training." Yancy grinned at Raleigh's astonished, delighted expression. "Seems he thinks we've got something to teach now."

"And here I thought I drove him nuts."

"Oh, I think it's a safe bet you still do. He'll just put up with you for the greater good." Yancy knuckled his brother's head, making Raleigh grunt and whine in protest. "Now go to sleep."

"Not everyone needs eighteen hours, ol' man," Raleigh mumbled, but his eyes were already drooping again. "You're the one who keeps breaking curfew." He draped an arm across Yancy's shoulders as if to pin him down. "Movement in the Breach in a few months. We got ass to kick again soon."

Yancy grinned and closed his eyes. "Sounds good. Don't wake me up before then."

*****FIN*****

_And so ends my take on the history of the Becket boys. I hope all my readers will stick around for the next installment, which should start posting after Christmas. (Previews will probably be up on my Tumblr before that.)_

_As you can probably guess, that fic is my take on the history of the Hansens. Here are some tidbits that form the basis for that story: (1) Good and bad men aren't simple to identify, even when you mind-meld with them; (2) most people don't know that Herc Hansen and Stacker Pentecost didn't truly bond until after the Mark-1 glory days; and (3) Raleigh didn't realize that Chuck's attitude in Hong Kong wasn't just general disdain - it was personal._

_All that and much more in __**Generation K: Aurora Australis**__._

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**


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